Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is provided for in the Estimates. The intention is that from March self-employed people will have access to the free dental check and eye test for the first time, just as employees do. Then, from October, everyone, including self-employed and employed, in other words all contributors to PRSI, will once again have access to scale and polish treatment for teeth as well as subsidised eye glasses and hearing aids. This will be a partial reversal of the cuts made under a previous Government.

I caution the House that this is all subject to an agreement with the people who provide these services. The dentists are private practitioners, as are opticians. Those discussions have started already. I will be meeting the dentists personally on Monday. I hope they will come along with us on this. It is always possible for the Government simply to issue a contract and allow those dentists and opticians who want to avail of it to do so, while those who do not want to need not. My initial effort will be to try to get the associations that represent those groups to agree to it. I hope they will since some of them have been calling for this for some time. I hope they will work with us in ensuring that this materialises.

Deputy Brady and I might be closer ideologically than we suspect. Given his comments-----