Imelda Munster (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Public dental services have almost collapsed under this Government's watch. There are two main issues here. Primary school children are not getting vital checks in second, fourth and sixth class. Nearly half of children are not getting their checks. This was around 100,000 children last year and 100,000 children the year before that. Up to one year ago, more than 12,000 children had been waiting for up to three years for dental assessment and treatment in counties Louth and Meath. Such basic preventative healthcare is so important for children. When a child is denied dental screening, they run the risk of not having oral diseases diagnosed and treated or of missing serious orthodontic interventions.

The other main issue is dental care for medical card holders. There are 600 practising dentists under the dental treatment services scheme. This is to cover a population of more than 1 million medical card holders. In 2016, there were 1,600 dentists in the scheme, but for several years now there have been no dentists in Drogheda offering services under the scheme. Do you hear that, Minister of State? There is no dentist in Drogheda, the largest town in Ireland, offering services under the scheme. Constituents are coming to me with serious medical conditions like oral cancer and diabetes who cannot access a dentist. I have been raising this issue for a long time and in that time nothing has improved. There is a shortage of 1,000 dentists in the public scheme in comparison with the 2016 figures.

The HSE has no plans to recruit staff to deal with the problem. The recruitment embargo means it cannot appoint any dental staff other than those at consultant level. The Government has just given up and is not even trying to fix it. Maybe it does not care because many of those affected by this are from low-income households. The Government does not care if people are neglected, left in pain or are struggling to make ends meet to pay for private dentists. Dentists and patients have been getting nothing but lip service since 2021 when the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, started talking about solving the problem. When is the Minister going to get the dental treatment service scheme back up and running and fit for purpose? We need a commitment on this. It is a total farce.

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