Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Traditionally we have had a bit of a blind spot in oral health. Colleagues will be aware that it became a big issue last year with public patients or medical card holders trying to access dental and oral healthcare. A large number of dentists withdrew from the scheme and it was causing issues. There has been a strong response to that. The Cathaoirleach will be aware that we increased the fees to dentists by 40% to 60%, which was significant. I asked my officials to look around Europe and compare the amount we pay private providers in Ireland versus other countries in Europe for public patients. We compare favourably. We may not pay the most on everything but we are right up there in the amounts we pay. My ask of the dentists was that they would re-engage with the scheme on the basis that there had been a 40% to 60% increase in the fees and that we had kicked off meaningful engagement with the Irish Dental Association on that.

A few other things have happened. The fees have gone up by 40% to 60%, which is a large amount of money. Nearly €5 million was available for this year as well for one of the issues the Cathaoirleach raised, which is early intervention. We are kicking off an oral health package for children up to the age of seven. It essentially goes from birth to seven years old. That is being piloted. It will need significant investment into the future and it will need an expansion of the number of healthcare professionals available. I want to double the number of dental college places. We do not train enough dentists and we probably do not hire enough of them either. We are looking to double that and the Minister, Deputy Harris, and I are working on that.

On the orthodontic lists, this is a significant amount of money for a lot of parents. They are amounts that a lot of people cannot afford and the waiting lists were far too long. While they are still too long, I am happy to say there has been a nearly 50% reduction in the orthodontic waiting lists between 2019 and this year. There is more to do but there has been important progress made. We have also invested about €8.5 million this year in the waiting list action plan.

It is going to private care. Nearly 2,300 patients moved from public to private care. That is okay as a short-term measure. Obviously in the longer term, we want to be investing that money in the public service but while we have these waiting lists, we need to use every ounce of healthcare capacity we can get for people to get them the care they need. Looking to the longer term, the HSE has appointed a national lead. It is calling it a strategic reform lead. There is a national policy, smile agus sláinte. It has not had a national lead within the HSE and the advice I had from the chief dentist was that that was one of the reasons it really had not happened. I cannot remember when it was launched. I think it was quite a number of years ago but it did not really happen. It is now beginning to happen with the early intervention and the waiting list programmes.

We need a modern, fit-for-purpose contract with dentists to provide care to medical card holders as well. The current contract is old and too restrictive. We have heard healthcare professionals talk to this at length.I agree with them and that is why we are kicking this off with the Irish Dental Association. There is a long way to go on this but I hope the Chair will agree there is quite a lot of activity going on this year, which is funded into next year to continue with that.