Cavan’s children deserve better — so do their therapists
Parents to protest on Tuesday
In Co Cavan, the crisis in children’s disability services has reached a tipping point – and it’s the most vulnerable who are paying the price. Nearly 600 neurodivergent and disabled children are under the care of just 12 full-time staff employed by Enable Ireland, the organisation contracted by the HSE, with a shocking 58% vacancy rate. While Monaghan, facing a still high 39% vacancy rate, employs 18 staff for a similar caseload, Cavan’s situation stands as a stark outlier in an already broken system.
Families in Cavan are waiting over a year - sometimes longer - for essential services such as speech and language therapy and occupational therapy (OT). These are not optional supports. For children with developmental delays, autism, or complex disabilities, early intervention can mean the difference between thriving and lifelong struggle. The current system is not only delaying care - it's denying children their basic right to developmentally appropriate health services.
This is not a failure of therapists. It is a failure of the system.
Occupational therapists, speech and language therapists, and allied health professionals in Cavan and across Ireland are doing their absolute best under impossible conditions. But when one therapist is expected to manage caseloads in the dozens, quality of care inevitably suffers. According to the Association of Occupational Therapists of Ireland, over two-thirds of OTs have experienced burn-out in the past year. Nearly half have considered leaving the profession altogether.
Recent research from the University of Galway paints a grim picture: organisational dysfunction, poor planning, unsustainable workloads and high stress are pushing talented professionals into the private sector or out of healthcare entirely. In some cases, therapists report that they can no longer provide care at the standard their professional ethics demand.
It is hard to escape the irony: there needs to be an assessment into why even the assessment of children takes so long. Is it the wages? The conditions? The absence of career development? The lack of administrative and clinical support? It is likely all of the above. If the HSE wants to retain and recruit dedicated professionals, it needs to make public sector roles attractive again – existing staff should not have to shoulder the cost of under-staffing.
Cavan’s children deserve timely, meaningful support. So do the healthcare workers who care for them. The question now is: how long will the Minister for Health and the HSE wait before treating this as the emergency it clearly is?