David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

That is something the committee can follow up on. The Minister is working on a number of health (miscellaneous) Bills. Perhaps he intends for one of those Bills to deal with this. We can take the matter up with him. I thank Mr. O'Flynn. We need to get those changes.

I thank the Dental Council for the work it does. Mr. O'Flynn stated earlier that "the members of the current council are becoming increasingly concerned at the limits to their ability to protect the public". It is also our job to ensure dentists have the tools, power and authority to deal with concerns that arise. I hope there will be progress.

I will move on to the Irish Dental Association. I want to discuss a few issues with Mr. Hourihan. They were in the public domain recently and were addressed at the Irish Dental Association's conference. I thank him for the advocacy work he does.

The first issue is dental screening. In first, second, fourth and sixth classes, assessments are done for children. I understand that last year 200,000 children were eligible but that only 100,000 were actually screened. I am looking at the most recent response I got to a parliamentary question which charts the number of children who were screened or had an assessment. In quarter 4 of 2018, at the end of 2018, 152,000 children were screened or had an assessment; yet at the end of 2023 that number dropped to 104,000. That is a significant drop. One in two young people are not getting the assessments they need. Is that solely down to capacity in the public system? Is that the main reason the system is not able to ensure all children get the assessments they need?