Fine Gael has challenged the Minister for Education and Science, Mr Dempsey, to state whether or not he is deliberately delaying the provision of resources for children with special needs, and whether he is unprepared to provide these resources.
A Fine Gael survey of special needs provision in schools has found that children face an average wait of more than six months to be assessed by an educational psychologist.
Ms Olwyn Enright TD said that even those children who are assessed are not always receiving the resources they need.
According to the survey of 424 primary and post-primary schools, which was conducted at the end of last year, some schools are experiencing delays of more than nine months for students to be assessed.
Mr Dempsey recently said in a Dáil reply that more than 6,000 applications for special education resources were awaiting a decision by his Department.
Ms Enright, the Fine Gael spokeswoman on education, said that based on survey responses alone, there were more than 1,100 children waiting to have their needs assessed. The figure, when applied to the total population, could be as high as 10,000.
"This is absolutely unacceptable," she said. "Today, a child identified as being in need of psychological assessment will not get it until the next school year.Moreover, more than one-quarter of schools are waiting more than nine months for their students to get the assessments that they require."
This was not helped, she said, by the fact that the National Educational Psychological Service received a 1 per cent increase in funding this year. Given inflation, this was a net decrease.
Ms Eleanor Petrie, of the National Parents Council (post-primary), said: "The less assessments that are done, the less requirements there are for cash from the Department. If the Department were to do these assessments within a shorter timeframe, it would require a significant financial outlay."
A spokeswoman for Mr Dempsey refused to comment.