(Ireland) Ed minister: Children no longer need SPED assessment to get services; 18K on waitlist
- The end of childhood
- Dec 11
- 2 min read
Dec 9, 2025, Irish Mirror: Children will no longer need an assessment of needs to access special education
Children with additional needs will no longer need an assessment of need (AON) to access appropriate school placements, under new reforms.
Currently, this assessment is needed for children to be placed in special schools or special classes. This means thousands of children cannot access appropriate school placements as the waiting list for an AON continues to grow.
Some parents spend thousands of euro to receive a report from a private therapist in order to get their child in a special class or school. Latest figures released in September show that 18,097 children are waiting on AON.
Under the Disability Act, a child is entitled under statutory law to an assessment within six months of referral by the HSE. Children’s Minister Norma Foley today announced plans to scrap the need for an AON for school placements by September 2027, as she announced a rake of new reforms for how the assessments are undertaken.
Under the new system, assessments will only need to identify the additional needs of the child, rather than a diagnosis of disability. However, parents will still have the right to apply for AONs for their children, and the six month timeline will still be in place.
The HSE has projected that 25,000 children could be waiting on these assessments by the end of the year. Speaking today, Ms Foley said it will "take time to progress" through this list and it "will not happen magically overnight".
She added: "We are absolutely determined to find a better process. It will absolutely take time, there’s no point in saying otherwise, but it will be a better system than the broken system that we have currently." Under the reforms, Minister Foley said guidelines for assessment officers will focus on establishing the needs for a child, rather than lengthy and complex reports on a diagnosis of disability.
She said this will also lead to faster and a more efficient way of carrying out assessments, rather than "tying up" therapists' time unnecessarily. Currently, Minister Foley said therapists are spending up to 30 hours on an AON for one child, and are spending one third of their time on these reports.
Under a new law agreed by Cabinet today, assessment officers will be supported by 11 new teams, comprising 44 staff who will provide clinical guidance and support during the AON process. Each team will include a psychologist, a speech and language therapist, an occupational therapist and an administrator.
The Labour Party accused the government of "rushing out" the details of these reforms before a Dáil motion on assessments of needs this evening. Its children's spokesperson Mark Wall said: "Without the structures in place, this will not be worth the paper it’s written on.
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