Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The reason I flagged dental in particular relates to the DTSS scheme and the schools scheme. The correspondence helpfully gives figures for 2022, and for 2023 for the year to date up to September.

It shows that a greater number of fillings were done this year up to September than in the whole of last year; 30,000 more were done at that point. The information I was trying to get on the school dental scheme is supplied on page 8 of that document, which states:

The school dental scheme aims to target 3 classes (2nd, 4th, 6th) but is resource dependent. The majority of areas are targeting 6th class only: most are completing the provision of service to children from school year 2022/2023.

Currently, only one dental area has resources enabling them to target 25% of 2nd class children, with no dental area indicating that they have sufficient resources to target 4th class. Two dental areas have not yet completed targeting 6th class from 2020/2021 ... due a reduction in dentists in the past 4 years.

Underneath that, there is a table which shows that the "School year being completed" in respect of Laois is "2019/2020". It is unclear what age the children are and what class they are in. Do we take it that the reference to "2019/2020" is a reference to the sixth class children in that year? If so, those children are now 15 or 16. It is unclear. Similarly, the "School year being completed" in respect of Offaly is "2020/2021". That is the one it is working on at the moment. Again, it is unclear. It looks like it refers to sixth class from that year. Those are now 15- and 16-year-olds. In fact, in County Laois, children are 16 or 17 before they see the dentist for the first time. That corresponds to what I hear in the general area. We will look to have that clarified by the HSE, including the ages of the children it is dealing with at the moment and what year they are in. That table could be read in a number of ways because of the paragraph that comes before it.

On the number of contractors for the adult DTSS, it is helpful to look at CHO 8. The document states that the number of DTSS contracts there, as of September 2023, is 71. I did not get the answer I wanted about how many are in County Laois, which I asked specifically. I wish to get that information from the HSE about the number in County Laois and in each of the counties in the midlands, including CHO 8, which includes counties Louth and Meath. It covers six counties. We put a lot of work into this locally in the constituency office to try to track this information down. According to my information, there is only one dentist in the county who deals with clients in the DTSS. She is not taking any more patients and has not taken any new cases on. We went over this ground a lot. We have a budget and figures for the CHO area but we did not get a definitive answer from the HSE to say there are no dentists taking on new people under the DTSS. I also want to know the budget in the current year for CHO 8. I do not see that in the document. We want to know the number of dentists willing to take on clients under the DTSS in counties Laois and Offaly, the budget for the midland counties and if a breakdown per county is available. What we have provides some information but it does not give us the level of detail we want.

I welcome the replies we got concerning primary care centres. The HSE has given some indication of where the projects are at and if they are approved. It is useful to have that information because if we are to build Sláintecare, we cannot do it without primary care. Unfortunately, at the moment, we are not good at primary care in the country overall. The midlands mirror that. We must get a network of primary care centres in place and staffed to keep people out of public hospitals, which are clogging up the whole system. I note that reply and that we need to follow up with further detail on the dental scheme. I ask members to note that attachments (iii), (iv) and (v) in that correspondence are not to be published.

Category C is correspondence from private individuals and any other correspondence. No. 2216 C is from Deputy Hourigan, a former member of the committee, dated 7 November. It includes a proposal that the committee schedule a meeting with Teagasc in relation to links between Teagasc and the livestock industry and its involvement in the publication of The Dublin Declaration of Scientists on the Societal Role of Livestock. It is the role of Teagasc to provide research, advisory and training services to the agriculture and food industry. Although Teagasc is accountable to this committee, this seems to be a policy issue rather than related to the accounts of Teagasc and so the appropriate body for this issue is the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine. I propose that we note and publish this item. Is that agreed? Agreed. If members want to take up this issue, one option is to seek consent from Deputy Hourigan to forward her correspondence to the Secretary General of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine for his response to the matter. We will suggest that to her. Is that agreed? Agreed.

The next item of correspondence on the list came in late so it was not flagged but I will read it out anyway. It is No. 2229 C from Deputy Naughten, the Cathaoirleach of the Joint Committee on Social Protection, Community and Rural Development and the Islands, dated 7 November 2023. The committee invites members of the Committee of Public Accounts to an engagement with Mr. Tony Murphy, president of the European Court of Auditors, next Wednesday, 22 November, in Leinster House. If members wish to attend, please send an RSVP to the secretariat of the joint committee via the contact details provided in the correspondence by the end of business tomorrow. I flag it up in case members are interested. The president, Tony Murphy, is Irish.