Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We support the Bill and some of the amendments, which are worthwhile. I want to take this opportunity to raise a number of issues. No dentist in County Kerry will take on medical card patients at the moment. There was one in Killorglin but the staff were so overwhelmed with requests from across the county that they had to stop taking new patients. I was particularly struck by the case of a man who came to me. He had been working abroad for approximately 30 years. He came home needing to have a crown fixed and he expected the same level of healthcare that he had in the country from where he had come to retire. He was staggered that even though he had a medical card, he was not able to get that service. He was searching around the Ring of Kerry, looking for a dentist, and he could not get one. He came to me and I had to pull a favour from a dentist I knew to get him the treatment he so urgently needed. That is not acceptable.

As the Minister knows, there has been a haemorrhage of dentists from the dental treatment services scheme because the services covered are insufficient to provide dental care and the reimbursement rates are so low that dentists are losing money and it is costing them more to keep the practice going than they receive for treating a patient. The number of dentists holding these contracts nationwide had been in excess of 1,000; it declined from 1,600 in 2017 and now only 600 dentists throughout the country are actively treating medical card patients.

Primary school dental check-ups are running two to three years behind schedule, which means children with orthodontic needs are delayed getting on the waiting lists. The dental clinics in Kerry have treatment waiting lists that are five years long and orthodontists are coming into the county to provide treatment. The physical and emotional harm being inflicted on young people as they wait while their teeth get worse during puberty is unacceptable. What is the Government doing, in particular for Kerry, to ensure there is at least one dentist taking on medical card holders in each local electoral area, LEA?

Earlier this week, I met with members of the INTO regarding their pre-budget submissions and one of their four main demands stood out, which related to mental health support for pupils. Other speakers have mentioned the necessity for therapies and psychological services to be made available in primary schools, where children can be seen without having the stigma of having to leave the school or the classroom to go to see a psychologist or speech and language therapist on the other side of town, if they eventually get that service. I was informed that the number of primary schools referred to CAMHS and other services rose 40% during the pandemic. Special education teachers are trying to act as a stopgap to perform the task. Early intervention therapies in schools are working but more help is needed.

With regard to the pandemic bonus payment, staff are still waiting ten months on from when the promise was made who are working privately in the public system. It shows the level of two-tier unfairness in the system that they are still waiting at this late stage for their payment. What is being done to sort that out?

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