Disability services in this country are chaotic and threadbare. Families of children with additional needs have to fight for the very basics. All they want for their children is to be able to access an education and appropriate services and a chance for them to fulfil their potential. The very first step for most is to get an assessment of need and there are now over 15,000 children who have been waiting more than the legal time limit of six months for assessments. I have met children - I am sure the Tánaiste has as well - who cannot yet speak and who are left waiting years for speech and language therapy. Year after year passes and, as they grow older, their isolation from other children grows. Early intervention would make an absolute world of difference.

Routinely, whenever this issue is mentioned, the Government blames a High Court decision from 2022. It is helpful to detail what was in that judgment. It found that an accelerated 90-minute assessment process in which children were diagnosed with a disability but not told what disability they had was illegal. It found a child's needs should determine the nature and length of the assessment. I wonder what part of that judgment the Tánaiste has a problem with. I have heard him refer to it as rigid. The only rigidity in the judgment is its staunch defence of the rights of children with disabilities.

That judgment was delivered more than three years ago. How long more will the Tánaiste continue to blame it for the Government's failure to respond to this crisis? When I asked the Taoiseach about this last week, he let the mask slip. He said the Government had not acted on the judgment because it could not agree what to do. That is quite an extraordinary admission. Is it the case that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael simply cannot get their act together and decide what to do? This indecision on the part of the Government is having a huge impact on children with additional needs and their families. A total of 15,000 children are now overdue assessments of need. That will grow to 25,000 by the end of the year. More and more children are being left behind.

There are actions the Government can take now to significantly boost recruitment in key services. The pay and numbers strategy must go. It is placing a stranglehold on recruitment in primary care. We need proper investment in staff, with secure contracts to boost employment in primary care and children's disability network teams.

Will the Tánaiste confirm the Taoiseach's admission that the Government has been unable to agree what to do over the past three years? At this late stage, has the Government finally decided what it is going to do following the High Court judgment?

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. He is right. This is an area where a significant amount of work is needed to make progress. There is no doubt about that. I would make the point at the outset that I do not think any one strand of work will get us to where we need to get. We will need to do four or five very significant things at the same time and this is the focus of the Government, including the Minister, Deputy Foley, and the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton. The Minister and Minister of State updated the Cabinet sub-committee on disability on this matter in May. We are due to have a further meeting of that Cabinet sub-committee this month.

I agree with the Deputy that the right of a child to access an assessment of need must remain. I really believe that and the rest of the Government believes that. However, I also believe that we need to look at how that legislation works. This has been my view for a long period of time. It is the view of many people who work in clinical practice. It is also the view of many parents, who want clarity and to have a system that can more efficiently but in a clinically appropriate and clinician-led way determine the length of time required for the assessment. I believe in clinicians - not politicians or judges - determining that and that is the piece we want to get right.

From memory, the same article the Deputy referenced concerning the potential number of 25,000 children also spoke about how approximately one third of the children who went through the assessment of need process were determined not to have a disability in that defined sense. We need to give those children that clarity more quickly. Approximately 30% of therapists' time is now being spent on assessment of need. I am not suggesting this is easy, and we want to work constructively to get this right, but I would be misleading the Deputy if I did not say that we were going to bring forward reforms regarding the legislation around assessment of need.

The second thing we have to do - we have made the decision to do it - is establish a national therapy service for education. There are far too many parents who feel such a sense of relief when their children finally get places in education, particularly in special schools, only to then wonder about speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and physiotherapy. I think we agree that it makes sense to have therapy services in schools, starting with special schools and then going into special classes and then into mainstream schools. The Minister, Deputy McEntee, has received Government approval to proceed with that and I expect the recruitment for it to be able to commence very shortly, as in, in advance of the new school year.

I hear the Deputy regarding the pay and numbers strategy. I remember checking this out. If there was a piece of paper that said there was a cap stopping speech and language therapists being hired, I would agree with him 100% but the last time I checked this in recent days, there were funded vacant posts in therapies. We have to look at why those posts are vacant. It is not because there is a cap on recruitment. There are funded posts today that are vacant. We have taken the decision to significantly increase the number of therapy posts in universities - the Minister, Deputy Lawless, has led on this - so that we can have a greater pipeline of graduates. I would like to work with people in a collaborative way on this issue, as would the rest of the Government. We need to kick off a number of major bodies of work across this House in the next few weeks.

I asked the Tánaiste whether he would confirm what the Taoiseach said last week, which was that there had been indecision from the Government on this and that it could not agree over the past three years. I believe he implied in his answer that the Government had not been able to agree what to do. He is saying there need to be reforms to legislation but it is three years since the High Court judgment. That judgment was very good in terms of vindicating the rights of children with disabilities and additional needs. If it is the Government's intention to reform legislation, why has it taken so long to even decide what to do? This crisis is getting worse and worse by the day, creating significant stress. Yes, there are vacant posts on children's disability network teams but these teams have also been hit by the number of places they have being capped. Teams that used to have eight or ten people are being told that they are now down to two people and will stay at two people. The remaining people on those teams are saying that they cannot possibly cope with the workload and are asking how they can continue to do this. This has done significant damage when it comes to retaining staff and recruiting staff to fill vacant posts. When is the Government going to get a grip on this? When is it going to make decisions? When will it act? Will the Tánaiste confirm what the Taoiseach said, namely, that the Government had been unable to agree what to do for the past three years?

There is an agreed way forward. We have a very clear view forward regarding amending and reforming the legislation and the model around assessment of need and we want to work with people in good faith to get this right, including, most importantly, parents and those who carry out assessments of need - the clinical professions. The House can expect engagement from us on that very shortly.

We have seen an additional 272 staff in our children's disability network teams in the past year alone. The Minister, Deputy Foley, and the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton, are actively engaging on further measures about retaining existing staff and attracting new entrants. We have seen that decision regarding significantly ramping up the number of therapy places in third level. Another thing we are working on that probably comes across the Deputy's constituency office desk - it certainly comes across mine - is our engagement with CORU to examine how we can speed up the recognition of qualifications for staff coming from overseas. I want parents looking in to know that, in the here and now, we are also taking action. There were proposals that as we build up capacity in the public sector and bring about reforms, we would also use capacity in the private sector. I assure parents that we have made a waiting list initiative available where there is procurement of private assessments. A further €10 million has been provided this year. This has seen a 30% increase in assessments of need carried out in the past year. In other words, 4,162 were carried out in 2024 compared to 3,205 in 2023.