Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The public service provision is absolutely what we are talking about here and what we need to resource. Another thing being brought up by the dentists I am speaking to is the lack of oral or dental hygienists and how there may be a role for the national apprenticeship office in developing some kind of apprenticeship scheme in this area. The Irish Dental Association or dentists will probably call for that. We have a crisis and we need to work our way out of it.

We have spoken previously about the dental treatment services scheme, DTSS, and all of the challenges associated with it. We need to get dentists back into schools, examining children at a young age and getting them into streams to ensure they have good oral care and that they get any structural dental issues sorted out in their early teens, when it is most important. If there is any cosmetic dentistry needed on top of that, that should also be provided. These are real needs in our dental services that we are not providing for at the moment. We need to get back to where we were and to then improve from that point.

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