Mr. Brian O'Connell:

The safety of water fluoridation has been raised as an issue over and over again in every country. I can understand this. Most English speaking nations use water fluoridation to a greater or lesser extent. I have examined this issue. The WHO, the European Union, the Food and Drug Administration, FDA, and others have examined it in great detail and never been able to find any problem with its safety. The Health Research Board commissioned a study a few years ago, examined every piece of evidence and could not find a problem with it. Last year Public Health England recommended that more water fluoridation schemes be rolled out. More people in England receive fluoridated water than in Ireland.

It is a smaller percentage of the population but there are big fluoridated communities in the UK.

The Deputy is right about catching serious cases at earlier ages. We spoke earlier about on-demand services and children turning up in pain and with infection. Why are 70,000 children turning up in pain and why do 7,000 children have to go into hospital to have teeth extracted? By the time they are seen, it is too late. I agree with Dr. Green. No parent wants his or her child's first time visiting a dentist to be because the child has a serious infection and needs to be bundled into hospital and put to sleep to have teeth removed. Nobody wants that. No organisation or dentist wants that. This is why one of the key aspects of the policy, in line with all international recommendations, is to see children when their teeth first appear and start to give basic advice to them and their parents about looking after their teeth, diet, brushing and so on to ensure we do not have young children turning up in hospital needing extractions. That is very important.

At a later age, there is a growing problem with diabetes. There is a well-known relationship between gum disease and diabetes. The more one improves one, the more one improves the other. Some of the health insurance companies in the US will pay for people to have as much gum treatment as they want if they are at risk of diabetes because the more a person improves his or her gum health, the better controlled his or her diabetes will be and it will stop people from going into hospital. It also saves money. The preventative approach is important and runs through the everything.