Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses and thank them for the information they have given to the committee. It is highly important that the highest possible standards prevail in any health practice and we should try to make every effort to ensure nobody gets through the system who should not be there, whether in dental or general medicine, because a number of people who had unfortunate records got through in general medicine in the past. They should not have been in practice in Ireland and it is important, for the confidence the public need to have in services to ensure the standards are universal and that people practising here are aptly and properly qualified and have not been debarred in any way. That did not always happen in the past. I am not casting any aspersion on dental professionals but it is important to keep that in mind.

What effect did Covid have on dental services in general and on services to the general public? I know of people who had a full set of teeth before Covid and eventually ended up with no teeth or only 50% of them because it was not possible to get back into a service again. How did the dental profession cope with that, generally, throughout the country?

In respect of school dental examinations, what efforts were made to try to catch up given the sensitivity of the need to deal with schoolchildren in the appropriate years as opposed to passing them on and them having to wait for the next educational sphere?