Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is scandalous. Mr. Hourihan mentioned the famous Kevin "Heffo" Heffernan in relation to that. It is good to hear his name being mentioned in these hallowed walls. It is good to hear that someone remembers him. It is scandalous that we do not have up to date legislation.

On reading the witnesses' opening statement, particularly appendix 1 and some of the points they were making, while we are in the 21st century, this is almost going back hundreds of years. As for the idea that there might be teeth lying on a radiator or the fact that someone has been convicted of a sexual offence, we have stringent rules if people are trying to get a taxi licence and yet here we have someone operating. Such people can put someone asleep and can give people injections and so on. People are potentially going into this area who have no training, no background or have a criminal background and that is scandalous. I am shocked by it and the committee certainly will raise this at the next opportunity. That is one of the things we can do.

We can also ask whether the legislation itself is a priority because it does not appear to be. Legislation is being updated and it should not take a huge amount of effort and ability from the Department to try to upgrade that. We have heard some of the horror stories and have seen them on "Prime Time". It is possibly still ongoing and the Dental Council does not know how many people are practising. As for the council's own powers, does it have the resources, were it given the opportunity, to assess the premises in the first case? An example was given of someone operating in a prefab. While we probably have similar medical facilities in hospitals, that does not worry me but what does worry me is if the place is not clean, is not aesthetically clean and so on. What additional resources would the council need if we were to have a 21st-century approach, particularly with regard to the Dental Council and the onus of responsibilities the council thinks it should have?