Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am sorry to cut across the Chair. If I could just come back on that slightly, there has been a very significant increase in the money that is in the public scheme. The fees have gone up by approximately a half in one year. The dentists said they needed more money. We are paying them a lot more money. I will ask my officials to send a note to the committee but the last time I looked at this, the number of treatments on the scheme had started to increase again, which is good.

While we need to listen to, respect and acknowledge the concerns being raised by the dentists, we also need to push back on them a little. They are choosing to not treat public patients. They said they wanted more money and we have given them more money. Some dentists, to their great credit, have come back into the scheme and the number of treatments has gone up.

It was the Chair's colleagues who gave testimony in a Dáil debate earlier this year in which they said one of their constituent's dentist had refused to treat them as a medical card patient. They had tried to try to find a dentist who would treat them but could not find one. Eventually, a dentist said they would treat the constituent as a private patient. That is not okay. This needs to work in both directions.

Yes, we need to engage with dentists and listen to them, respect them and create a modern, fit-for-purpose scheme. The dentists need to play their part. The vast majority of GPs treat public patients. They do not turn around to their GP card patients and say, "I am not accepting your card but give me €70 and I will see you."

I hear the Chair and agree with what he said. The lot of us, the Oireachtas and this health committee, need to push back a little on the dentists and say they need to treat public patients. The fees paid in Ireland to treat public patients are very attractive by international standards and there is an expectation that dentists will do the right thing by their public patients.