Young campaigner secures pledge to tackle autism assessment delays following meeting in Limerick

“THE brawl in the HSE hall is officially over,” said teenage campaigner Cara Darmody after what she called a “massive success” in her meeting with HSE CEO Bernard Gloster in Limerick city yesterday, where she urged him to end delays in assessments of needs for autistic children.

Cara has secured a commitment from the HSE to launch a national recruitment drive for psychologists and therapists this September, in a move aimed at addressing the ongoing crisis in the assessment of needs for children with autism and disabilities.

Speaking on The Hard Shoulder on Newstalk FM yesterday, the young student who attends Loreto Secondary School in Clonmel, said she told Mr Gloster  "that the HSE are breaking the law and that they can't hide from that and that they shouldn't try to hide from that... He has to act urgently to stop breaking the law."

Cara claims the HSE is breaking the law by not assessing children within six months of the legal application. "I told him that they needed to start searching for more psychologists all around the country because what they're doing right now just simply isn't enough.

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Cara added that her meeting with Mr Gloster was a massive success and that her main aim was to get the HSE CEO to search the country for more psychologists and therapists and to finally get a handle on the assessment needs crisis. 

Speaking to Limerick Life, the Tipperary teenager said she provided Mr Gloster with evidence that a Tipperary psychologist is claiming that she could have completed 250 assessments of need in the last twelve months alone. 

"I also provided him with evidence of foreign companies who are willing to come to Ireland to solve the national picture. I wanted him to launch a national campaign totally different to what he's done previously."

Cara asserted: "He admitted that putting it up on eTender on an obscure website is not the way to recruit people."

Commenting after the meeting, HSE CEO, Bernard Gloster said:  "I was delighted to meet Cara and her father again today, it is our second time meeting and both have been really productive. The issue of assessment of need is quite a difficult challenge for us and what I was able to say to Cara is that we are going to redesign the specification of private sector provision for assessment of need. We're going to widely advertise and promote this based on appropriately qualified candidates being available."  

The aim of an Assessment of Need (AON) is to identify whether a person has a disability, the nature and extent of the disability, any health and education needs arising from that disability, and what services are required to meet those needs. An AON is not needed to access health services.

Last year, there was a 30% increase in AONs completed compared to 2023. In Q1 this year, 1,412 AONs were completed, which is a 65% increase on the same period in 2024 of 849. Initial analysis of Quarter 2 data indicates a further rise in AONs completed to 1,482, which would bring the number so far this year to 2,894, a 57% increase on the same period last year. This increase is due in part to the funding of €4.5m allocated in Budget 2025 to assist with sustainably addressing the AON backlog.