Mark Wall (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I also want to acknowledge that last night I received a phone call from the office of the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, to say she would unfortunately be delayed as had a prior commitment today.

There is a trend this morning in some of the Commencement matters that have been raised, because this is the third time I have brought up the issue of assessments of need, AONs. It continues to be an almost daily issue for my office and indeed for people who ring me when they are rightly in despair. I had a debate with the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, in this House just a number of months ago. I described the waiting lists and figures for the area in which I live. I said there were approximately 2,000 families, but she corrected me on that day and said that the figure was 2,665 families, rather than the figure I gave, and the figure in the official report she was about to read out, which stated that there were 1,320 families waiting on an assessment of need. She described that day as “Groundhog Day”. She also went on to say that this is as bad as it gets. She said that the HSE has not kept pace with the growth in population in the census return. That is what she stated on that day.

Today, I want to concentrate on one family I have dealt with for the past number of years. They are John and Yvonne Creaney and their son, Pádraig. Their son had an assessment of need in 2012 when he was seven years of age. Pádraig has struggled over the years and, given his struggles, his family has sought the best for him by following up to try to get an updated assessment for their son. The family received a letter from the appeals office in November 2021, after years of them calling without being answered. It stated that his review had commenced and that he would be offered a preliminary team assessment, PTA, given the length of time involved since the last one and, most importantly, given the changes in Pádraig’s presentation.

Unfortunately, in September 2020, a reply I received on behalf of the family stated that this young man was highlighted as requiring a review in August 2020. A plan was in place in late 2021 to review his case, using the PTA. As the Minister of State will know, this method had been invalidated. The team stated that it had no alternative for this young man and his case will be highlighted as one of a number of past AONs. I followed up with the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, in November 2022 and I received the same reply I just outlined. It stated that there was no alternative pathway or formal allocation to review an AON case.

The Minister of State, Deputy Richmond, will know that last year, in a debate the Dáil on autism and pathways for assessments of need, the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, in an unusual intervention, said she was going to change all of this. She said we would have changes to AONs, with the setting up of six units for assessments. It gave hope to families, like the Creaney family in Athy. After a number of months, and after I sent a number of letters to the Minister of State and the HSE, I received an updated response on 14 February this year. To say that the response was disappointing would be an understatement. It was a copy and paste of the letter from August 2022, stating once again that the assessment of need office currently had no alternative pathway and no formal allocation of resources in place to carry out a clinical reassessment for AON cases. That is the same reply I received two years prior regarding that particular family.

That is just an example of one family, but I get calls like that from so many families week in week out. They are looking for an assessment and a re-assessment of need. That child was seven in 2012. It is now 2024 and he has not had his re-assessment of need. The family is crying out for it and there are more families in the line. There does not seem to be any improvement in relation to assessment of need. When I receive a letter that states that there is no formal pathway, there is no alternative and I have to share that with a family who are in despair, it beggars belief. I hope that the Minister of State has brought some good news for the Creaney family in Athy and all the other families who have contacted me and other public representatives in the CHO 7 area.