Girl diagnosed as non-verbal autistic living in Dublin hospital since February

Maryjane Juhasz (right) with her daughter Marykate (left).

A 15-year-old child with severe autism is living in the emergency department of a Dublin hospital, while the closest residential placement the HSE can offer her is 300km from her home.

Marykate O’Donoghue, who was diagnosed as non-verbal autistic with a moderate-to-severe intellectual disability when she was five, has been staying at Temple Street Children’s Hospital since February after her parents ran out of money for her care.

Marykate had previously been partially-resident at a State-funded facility, but was removed by her parents in March of 2025 on foot of concerns over her standard of care.

Four suggestions of HSE-funded placements for Marykate have been made to her parents since their daughter was removed from the facility, all at least 150km from her home.

Those suggested placements were in Laois in April 2026, Offaly and Limerick in October 2025, and most recently Tipperary last month — a 300km distance away from her home, comprising a round trip of six hours.

Marykate’s mother Maryjane Juhasz and her husband instead funded private at-home care for their daughter from June 2025 until February 2026, by which point they became financially incapable of continuing to do so.

"We brought her to hospital because we couldn’t manage any more,” Maryjane told the Irish Examiner, adding: “Our child has been abandoned by the State.”

Of the placement offered to Marykate in Tipperary in July, Ms Juhasz said: “The distance is shocking”.

"Why should a child go that far away from home?” 

A HSE spokesperson said the organisation “does not comment on individual patient cases”.

Maryjane Juhasz with her daughter Marykate.

Placements for disabled children at substantial distances from their home or support base have become increasingly frequent in recent years.

Last June, the Irish Examiner reported that at least a quarter of children with disabilities in State accommodation are living more than 50km from their home.

At the same time, the number of children as young as three with disabilities living in State residential places doubled in just over two years up to the end of April 2026.

More than 80% of those cases, meanwhile, end up in placements with for-profit providers as opposed to State-funded care.

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Social Democrats spokesperson on disabilities, Liam Quaide, said of the ongoing trend towards for-profit providers that “it is increasingly difficult to see how the HSE can exercise meaningful strategic control over it”.

“When services develop reactively, according to where individual providers happen to have capacity, rather than through planned regional provision, distance from home and disruption of family and community relationships become inevitable," he added.