Mr. Fintan Hourihan:

No. We are all familiar with the fact that GPs operate co-operatives to provide out-of-hours cover, but there is no equivalent in dentistry. As regards areas in which there is a shortage of dentists and as I said earlier, sometimes it means patients will present to the HSE public service, which is not set up to deal with large numbers of adults. There is no structured fallback arrangement in place in those circumstances.