Numbers of Cork-based children waiting for assessments jumps 20% in three months

The number of children overdue an assessment of need (AON) in Cork has increased by 20% in three months. Improvements are slower in Cork than the national average, the disability minister has said.

An AON is an assessment by the HSE of children or young people with a disability.

It identifies a child’s health needs and the health services required to meet those needs.

Norma Foley, children, disability, and equality minister, said: “It is important to note that children do not require an assessment of need to access health services, including primary care, children’s disability network teams, or mental health services.”

She provided HSE data to Cork Fianna Fáil TD Padraig O’Sullivan that 20,200 applications were overdue for completion nationwide at the end of 2025 and had an average wait time of 26.14 months.

Assessments overdue

While no Cork-specific average wait time was available, she said that 1,751 assessments of need in Cork were overdue for completion as of the end of 2025.

This marks a 20% increase from the 1,473 AON assessments overdue at the end of September 2025, as reported in The Echo at the end of last year.

Of the latest figures, 175 were overdue for less than a month, 290 were overdue for between one and three months, and the remainder, 1,286, representing 73%, were overdue for over three months.

Ms Foley said there had been a “high number of applications” for an AON in Cork, with 2,056 applications received in 2025, compared to 1,568 in 2024.

She added that there had been a 43% increase nationally in the number of completed assessment-of-need reports year on year, and “this improvement is reflected in the Cork regions, although not to the same extent”.

Ms Foley said that improvements announced by the Government to the AON process in December 2025 should, over time, lead to a reduction in the lengths of time people are waiting.

Mr O’Sullivan told The Echo: 

“While I welcome the repeated clarification that a diagnosis isn’t a requirement for people to access services, I find the numbers waiting for an assessment depressing.

“We are being told repeatedly that money and resourcing isn’t an issue, then why do the waiting lists in Cork improve, but not to the same degree as the national figure?

“There seems to be something cultural or inherent in the HSE in the Cork/Kerry region that prevents us from making the necessary progress. It’s disillusioning at this point.”