Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Dental services have been collapsing for years. There is no excuse for the complete neglect of the sector when it has been crying out for reform and regulation for decades. Dental services are out of reach for many people. Preventative care, regular check-ups and minor dental services are only available to people who can afford to pay.

There are many failures in the current system but one of the most glaring is the abandonment of the school screening programme. Every child in the State should have a free check-up with a dentist in second, fourth and sixth class. That is not a recommendation; it is a statutory requirement. I received those services in primary school, as did everyone I grew up with, but the scheme has been allowed to crumble to pieces. The number of HSE dentists has dropped by nearly a quarter since 2006. Is it any wonder waiting lists are out of control and children are not receiving the care they need? Only half of all eligible children were seen by a school dentist last year. In some rural areas, the figure was much lower. Almost 80% of school children in Laois-Offaly were denied a school screening last year. Some parts of the country have a backlog of up to ten years, and children are not receiving their first screening until they are in transition year. We need to acknowledge the consequences of these failures. Children who needed preventative care and simple check-ups are living in agony. Some of them cannot even get a public appointment to have a tooth extracted. The wait time for surgery in Cork university dental school and hospital is two years and six months.

There is a particular type of pain that comes with dental issues. We have all experienced it at some point. The idea there are children and adults around the country living with that pain for months and years because they cannot get basic dental care should be a source of shame for the Government. I cannot understand the sheer lack of interest the Minister and Department of Health seem to have in improving dental services. The Minister has not even turned up for this debate.

What little has been done is nothing short of insulting. Some €5 million was allocated in the budget to address the backlog in school screening. However, this money cannot be used to hire more public dentists. How exactly does the Government intend to fix the backlog without hiring more dentists? Is it by further outsourcing to the private sector? That is not working too well for medical card patients under the dental treatment services scheme. There are currently only around 600 private dentists working under the public scheme and some counties do not have a single one.

To make the situation even worse, for 40 years successive Governments have decided not to bother regulating the dental profession. The Dental Council has been pleading with Ministers for years for powers to regulate the conduct and activities of dentists, inspect practices and mandate continual professional development. "RTÉ Investigates" reports have shown how dangerous that lack of regulation is. Thirty-seven dentists who have been sanctioned by regulators abroad are practising in Ireland, one of whom has been convicted of sexual assault and is the subject of another criminal investigation. Serious infection control issues were raised, including a dentist working from a Portakabin, unsterilised instruments and reports of dentists leaving bloodied extracted teeth on a radiator. There have been repeated instances of people who seem to be pretending to be dentists causing damage to people's health and forging the signatures of registered dentists on forms. The clinics these people were based on are apparently still operating because no one has the power to stop them.

The Department of Health has been dragging its feet for too long and it is time the Minister committed to reforming the dental profession. We need basic regulation to ensure patient safety because people have been left completely vulnerable to fraud and malpractice. We need many more public dentists, which means more college places and reform of the dental treatment services scheme. We need to ensure that every child in this State, no matter where they live, receives the dental care they are entitled to.

I asked the Taoiseach yesterday if he would be supporting the Social Democrats' motion today. He said the Government would but I think it is pretty disingenuous to support it and then do absolutely nothing about it. Will the Minister of State outline the short-, medium- and long-term measures that will be taken to address this issue? That would be very helpful.

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