Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will certainly take every point Deputy Nolan has raised and raise them with the Minister for Education and the Minister for Health. We discuss this issue at Cabinet regularly.

As regards private assessment of need, that is, being able to utilise the private sector to work through the private assessments, we allocated just under €7 million in May 2024, as the Deputy will be aware. That will fund approximately 2,500 private assessments of needs for long-waiting families - families who have waited too long. I want to be very frank on that.

As for Deputy Nolan’s question about getting a commitment that all the regional leads would be written to again, I agree with her. That should happen. However, let us be clear: that should be happening anyway. I want to be clear on that; it should be happening now anyway.

All of these people do magnificent work. I was in Portmarnock, in my area, two weeks ago and met a number of SNAs. The work they do is incredible but they are under pressure. They need the support that is there. We have upped the resources. I will not go through all the figures again. We must recognise that where something is not working as it should, that needs to be said. Lots of kids are being helped but more need to be. I will make a commitment to talk directly to the Minister, Deputy Foley, who has been a really strong advocate in this space, and the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, and the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, to ensure there remains a specific and clear focus on this. Deputy Nolan’s suggestion to issue further correspondence to the regional leads is a good one. I will certainly pursue that.

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