Mr. David O'Flynn:

There has been a positive change in the Department of Health and in our engagement with it in the past six months. The Irish Dental Council met the Minister in January. He gave a commitment to look at some amending legislation if possible. As I acknowledged earlier, the political reality is that a new Act is much further down the line. A significant factor in the improvement has been the establishment of the oral health unit in the Department. We have had good engagement with that unit at an executive level on the matters we raised in our submission, and it has been quite positive and collaborative. It is probably still at an early stage, but we were invited at Christmas to submit three items we felt needed urgent regulatory change. We submitted those, which concern a small element of practice inspection, a competence scheme and some improvements around the way-----