Dr. Will Rymer:

I thank committee members for the invitation to attend today's meeting. I want to underline how seriously the situation has deteriorated. Dentistry, particularly under the medical card scheme, has deteriorated to the point that it is now in a perilous state. There is a growing inequality between private patients availing of private dentistry and medical card patients.

There were significant cuts to the medical card scheme in 2010. If those cuts had not happened, there would have been a further €1 billion of investment in dentistry in Ireland. What we are seeing now, in 2024, is the aftermath of those cuts. In 2014, there were 1,600 dentists working under the scheme, which equates to treatment of 430,000 patients. Today, 810 dentists have contracts to work under the scheme and we understand fewer than 600 of them are active. The Senator highlighted the situation in County Clare. There are 13 dentists in the county who have a contract but the likelihood is that a significant number of them are not in a position to take new patients. When there is a cut in the number of dentists offering treatment under the medical card scheme, all of those patients potentially become condensed into single-handed practices, where the dentist does not have the physical capacity to see any more patients.