Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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I have a couple of questions. I want to focus on some of the groups we have had in recently.

Before I get into that, I have a local issue. We all tend to go down this route. I refer to the importance of Sláintecare, new pathways to care and so on. Two of the witnesses focused on waiting lists. I was told that the waiting lists for audiologist services in Tallaght last year was 2,500. This year, it is 5,800. Is it down to staff vacancies that cannot be filled or the recruitment freeze? Is this a pattern or is it just a particular problem in Tallaght?

While the witnesses look at their notes on that, I will discuss some of the groups that appeared before this committee. We had the Dental Council and the Irish Dental Association in a couple of weeks ago. Again, they focused on some of the challenges in relation to that. One of the issues the Dental Council raised was the lack of regulation in the area. Is that a priority for the Department? Some of the things they read into the record included unregistered dentists providing treatment to patients, including a person with a conviction of sexual assault, a person who repeatedly failed to diagnose serious infections in a young child, a person who had been struck off the register of dentists in other European countries and notifications of international regulators concerning 40 registered dentists who had sanctions applied in other countries.

There was a whole list of things like that, such as serious infection prevention and control matters, including a dentist working from a portacabin. There were concerns about instruments not being properly sterilised, dentists leaving bloodied extracted teeth on a radiator and so on. This came from the Dental Council.

We listened to the Irish Dental Association and it talked about how 100,000 primary school pupils were denied access to dental care and the fact we are moving people from a public service to a private service. It struck a lot of us that it is clearly a whole area of healthcare that seems to be the poor relation in regard to funding. For people with a medical card, it is almost impossible to get a dentist to take them on. Will there be any additional focus? What is going to be done? My view is that it seems to be a broken service. The people who came in were asking whether there was a plan to roll out services. Can any of the witnesses answer of those questions?