Sinn Féin TD for Dublin South West Seán Crowe has said that it is “shocking and utterly unacceptable” that the waiting list to access services in the Children’s Disability Network Team in Chamber House, Tallaght is now 56 and a half months, almost five years.
As of the start of November, there are 1,046 children on the waiting list for Chamber House, 904 of them have been waiting more than a year.
The Dublin South-West TD said “the waiting list to access services in the Children’s Disability Network Team in Chamber House, Tallaght is now 56 and a half months, almost five years.
“There are over a thousand children waiting for services and 904 of them have been waiting for longer than a year.
“This is shocking and utterly unacceptable. We are talking about access to Speech and language therapy, Occupational therapy, physiotherapy and a range of other therapies that would give children who need them a greater ability to access education and socialise with their peers.
“We are forcing parents to consider extremely expensive private services, if they can even find space there because of the pressure that the almost entirely nonfunctional public system is placing on alternatives.
“These children have been abandoned by a Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil government that make a mess of everything they touch. No school places for children with special education needs, no school bus to get those that have a place to school in the morning. There are even thousands more children waiting to access an Assessment of Needs to get onto that five year waiting list in Chamber House.
“This government has allowed children’s disability services to collapse and they have absolutely no plan to fix them. While they do nothing, it is children who suffer the consequences,” Crowe said.