Mr. Fintan Hourihan:

Absolutely. The facts speak for themselves. There has been a very significant decline in the number of dentists participating in the scheme and, related to that, there has been a great decline in the number of patients availing of benefits under the scheme. Where a dentist leaves the scheme and a patient presents, the scheme is very clear that the responsibility to find another dentist rests on the HSE. From speaking to HSE officials, I know that, in many parts of the country, the HSE finds it next to impossible to find another dentist because large numbers of dentists have left the scheme. The consequence of that is that patients travel a great distance for treatment, that they postpone treatment, that they receive no treatment or, in a small number of cases, that they borrow or otherwise find money to enable them to pay to be treated privately. When, in a normal year, one in three patients gets some benefit from the scheme while last year only one in five patients visited a dentist, there can be no doubt that there has been a huge-----