Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

This issue relates to access to services for children with disabilities. The Government is utterly failing a generation of children with disabilities and their families. We can see this clearly in Dublin North-West, the area I represent. The children’s disability network teams, CDNTs, are under-resourced and there are unacceptable delays in assessments, with multiyear waiting lists for therapies. The teams fail to provide the vital and urgent care children and their families need. The failure to provide assessments of need is impacting on children’s ability to access other services, especially their access to education and preschool, primary school and secondary school places. This Friday, we will see parents, who are stressed up to their eyeballs, courageously holding a 24-hour sleep-out at the Department of Education because of the failure to provide special education school places.

Figures provided by the HSE show that 14,221 applications for assessments of need nationally were overdue for completion by the end of last year. Almost one in four of those overdue assessments are in the area of community health organisation, CHO, 9, which includes my constituency. In this area, which comprises north Dublin, including areas like Ballymun, Finglas, Santry and Glasnevin, there were 3,193 overdue applications. Some 2,791 of the children to whom those cases relate had been waiting more than three months. Under the Disability Act, an assessment of need must be completed within six months.

When it comes to CDNTs, the situation is just as bleak. The most recent data for the CHO 9 area showed 2,596 children waiting for an initial contact with a CDNT at the end of last year and almost 90% of those children had been waiting for more than one year. This is again the same area of north Dublin with the highest number of children waiting for more than 12 months for initial contact with a CDNT. This is unacceptable.

I wish to highlight two cases that have been raised with me. The first concerns Jack who is six and who needs an autism class. He has been tossed around between primary care and a CDNT and has still not received an assessment of need, a diagnosis or therapy. He is six years old and has still not received a school place confirmed for the 2025-26 school year. This is the second year running that he has not received a place. I spoke to his mother, Susan, who explained the level of stress and anxiety that she and her family experience because of the lack of services and clarity around a school place. This situation is not acceptable.

Noah, another child, is three years old. He is non-verbal and severely autistic. After initially having his referrals to the CDNT rejected, he was finally referred two years later only after an emotional appeal from his mother. In October 2024, Noah’s family had to secure legal representation to compel the HSE to complete his assessment of need. They are still waiting for that assessment. They were contacted by the HSE asking them to consent to an incomplete assessment of need, one without his report from the National Council for Special Education and with no forecast date for completion, which would render it effectively useless in securing a school placement. I wish to ask the Minister for children, disability and equality, Deputy Foley, what will she do to ensure that children like Jack and Noah and the thousands of other children in north Dublin have access to the therapies, support services and school places they need.

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