Mr. Fintan Hourihan:

It is important to say that dentists continued to provide treatment throughout the lockdowns and pandemic period. They were under horrendous pressure. One of the biggest disappointments was that no support was given by the Department of Health to dentists who continued to provide care. While everyone else got personal protective equipment, PPE, dentists got none. That was a huge disappointment. It probably cost dentistry €60 million extra a year and dentists took that hit. The pandemic meant that not as many patients were seen as would otherwise have been seen because of the restrictions. Dentists maintained the highest standards of infection prevention and control. There were safe places for people to visit. Of course, there is a backlog. We have backlogs in the public service and in private practice simply because dentists had to manage their book and appointments in a different way. What tended to happen was that more would be done in longer appointments, but there were fewer appointments. That inevitably caused delays.

Looked at in a different way, and I invite my colleagues to contribute here, is that, perversely, one of the things we maybe had not envisaged is that people have a greater appreciation of the importance of oral health because of the consequences of the pandemic, when people were not able to get to see their dentist regularly. Their diets and habits changed. Some of it was purely appearance, the so-called Zoom effect. We all became very aware of our physical appearance from looking at ourselves on-screen, which we all had to do too much over those years. There were consequences and a backlog was created simply because of the new ways in which dentists had to work. Dentists were innovative but, again, they were let down by the State. We were promised PPE within seven days in May 2020. It never materialised. Everyone, including pharmacies, nursing homes and hospitals, was given PPE bar dentists. It is just another example of how dentistry is just not given any priority.