Imelda Munster (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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I just wanted to come back to the crisis in public dental services across the State. I have raised this with Mr. Reid previously. We are now at a crisis point. I will give my home town as an example. There is not one dentist in Drogheda, which is the largest town in Ireland, available to take medical card patients. This is happening right across the State. I understand that there was a meeting last Wednesday, 2 March, but there is a lack of urgency. This has been going on for over a year now. In fact, it has been longer than that. We are at crisis point now. That meeting was held on 2 March. There is nothing scheduled again until June. Where is the sense of urgency in getting this sorted? It is as if medical card patients do not matter. It is as if they are irrelevant. The scheme, as we know, is not fit for purpose. We see that there has been a reduction in funding for dental services since 2017.

There is a separate issue. There are more 100,000 children in primary schools across this State who are waiting for their first dental appointments. At what stage will this complete chaos stop? It is has just gone beyond what is acceptable. When will the dental treatment scheme be sorted so that medical card patients and those who are very ill, such as kidney transplant patients, patients with cancer and people with diabetes, apart from everybody else on top of that, cannot access dental appointments. The same is true for schoolchildren, for whom it is important to have their first dental appointments because seeing a dentist is a preventative measure. There is utter chaos. When is it going to be sorted?