Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Social Democrats for bringing forward this motion. It is an issue in every constituency in the country and it is certainly an issue in my constituency in regard to the school dental service. Parents contact me regularly where their children have gone into sixth class and have never seen a dentist and go on to secondary school without seeing a dentist. This is happening throughout the country. The Minister of State gave a history lesson rather than the facts of the reality. It was the situation that children were seen in second class, fourth class and sixth class. This is no longer happening anywhere. They are very lucky if they are seen once in primary school. In a lot of cases even the provision of emergency services for children needing dental care is very difficult to access. It must be recognised there is a complete failure in this system. The orthodontic services for children who have difficulties that may require orthodontic treatment is also totally backlogged. The Minister of State must recognise that the system is broken. There needs to be an urgent recruitment of additional dentists into the school dentist service immediately.

The other issue is that people with medical cards cannot get a dentist anywhere. I recently had an elderly couple in with me who said they were trying to get a medical card service. We rang around dentists and we looked online. The nearest dentist they could get would mean them having to travel 77 miles, and that would also require a wait. I am sure the Minister of State, like most of us at some stage in our lives, has had a toothache. To suggest you would have to wait maybe a week with that toothache before you would be able to see a dentist is totally outrageous. I have come across people who have a medical card who have had to go to the credit union to borrow money to try to get their teeth situation sorted out. This should not be happening in a so-called developed, modern society and economy that is booming. It simply should not be happening.

We also have many more children in our schools now, including children who have come from Ukraine and other countries. They are also coming into the system. We need to recognise that the only way this will be solved is to lift the embargo, to recruit more dentists and to train more dentists. This situation is bad now but in another three years it is going to get worse.

On the suggestion that the Government will not oppose the motion, as Deputy Whitmore mentioned, the Government keeps doing this when the Opposition brings forward motions on serious issues. It says it will not oppose the motion but it will not do anything else either. That is the problem we have. It is simply unacceptable that the Government continues on this charade that everything is good. It is not. People out there are suffering and the Government needs to step up to the mark, recruit more dentists, and provide services for people across the country.

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