The government’s proposed changes to the Assessment of Need (AON) process — currently going through pre-legislative scrutiny in the Oireachtas — is essentially cover for years of service development failure, according to Social Democrats TD Liam Quaide.
Deputy Quaide, who is the party’s spokesperson on disability and mental health, said:
“Pre-legislative scrutiny with service providers, representative bodies and legal experts is confirming the reality that so-called AON ‘reform’ is a misguided response to failure by successive governments to build properly staffed, integrated services across Primary Care, Children’s Disability Network Teams (CDNTs) and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS).
“Families are stuck in a system that does not work for them. A child can be sent from one waiting list to the next with no clear pathway to necessary supports. Parents then look for the one route that gives them some certainty – that route is the AON process. It is the one clear legal right families have, and the one process which seems to have a guarantee of some outcome.
“Service providers such as Enable Ireland and St Gabriel’s Foundation, as well as a representative body, the Psychological Society of Ireland, have told us plainly that families are going down the AON route because it can feel like the quickest way to be heard — and sometimes the only way to get a clear answer.
“If the government tightens, reshapes, or limits the AON route without properly resourcing Primary Care, CDNTs and CAMHS, it does not reduce need. It simply removes the one lever families feel they have, while unmet need continues to grow across services.
“This legislative change is a misdirection of focus from what is most urgently needed – proper workforce planning, recruitment and integration of services.
“We still don’t have clear staffing benchmarks for Primary Care and we still don’t have a serious, comprehensive recruitment drive in this area – even though Primary Care is the most crisis-hit part of our child and adolescent services.
“I also have concerns about outsourcing AON assessments. This approach fragments care and creates perverse incentives for clinicians to leave the public sector. The €20m being invested in privately outsourced AONs should be used to recruit permanent staff to rebuild our Primary Care services.
“Real reform means a multi-annual funded workforce plan, clear staffing benchmarks, urgent recruitment and a single point of access that works so children are seen quickly in the right service and supported, as far as possible, within the same service.”
March 6, 2026