‘Unacceptable’ almost five years waiting times for disability services for children

Waiting times for disability services in Tallaght for children with complex needs are now at almost five years.

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 November 2025, there are 1,046 children on the waiting list for Chamber House, with 904 of them waiting more than a year, according to Sinn Fein TD for Dublin South West Seán Crowe.

The team at Chamber House provide services for children and young people aged up to 18 years with complex needs associated with their disability, including autism, intellectual disability, physical disability and sensory disability, who live in Brookfield, Jobstown, Killinarden, Newcastle, parts of Oldbawn, Rathcoole, Saggart and Springfield.

Deputy Crowe called the waiting times “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,” he said.

“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,” he continued, adding that 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.”

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme