Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to raise the issue of the escalating crisis in public dental health services. As the Taoiseach is aware, before the pandemic struck, waiting lists had been unacceptably high for many years and the shortfall in the context of the HSE hiring adequate numbers of staff for Covid testing made a bad situation worse throughout last year. In my constituency, Dublin Central, dentists in the public system have become increasingly frustrated as staff continue to be redeployed for vaccination duties. There are more than 10,000 schoolchildren in Dublin and north Dublin who rely on HSE-provided dental care. That figure does not include children who require specialist treatment. The families concerned do not have the option of private care when the public system lets them down.

Last week, the Irish Dental Association informed its members that the HSE dental services in Kildare and west Wicklow have been forced to confine the provision of dental care to emergency care only for children and adults. This decision has nothing to do with the recent cyberattack, it is about the historic under-resourcing of dental care in the public system. The association’s fear is that HSE dental services throughout the State will be forced to impose similar restrictions, sooner rather than later. Is the Taoiseach aware of the depth of this crisis and what action will he take to ensure that regulations, introduced by him more than 20 years ago to ensure and guarantee treatment, are finally implemented and resourced in full?

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