Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Social Democrats and Deputy Shortall for bringing this motion. It typifies the lack of attention and lack of care of the Minister that he is not here to address this. If I thought he was away negotiating with the HSE or working on a dental Bill, that would be one thing, but we can be sure that he is not. The state of dental services, particularly for children and the elderly, is a disgrace, and especially in County Kerry with an older and more vulnerable population and a high degree of peripherality, proper services are essential.

I raised the case before of a man who returned from the Netherlands. He had a medical card and he had been many years abroad but he expected that he would receive treatment for some urgent dental care he needed. He could not find a single dentist in the whole of County Kerry to look after him. After spending a few years abroad and returning to his home place, the services were not the same as he would have expected to receive abroad.

Medical card patients have nowhere to turn in County Kerry. No dentist will take them on. One dentist in mid-Kerry who was still taking on medical card patients had to stop because there was an overwhelming demand for his services as he was the only one doing it. This situation requires negotiations with the Irish Dental Association but nothing is being done about it. Dentists are frustrated, families are frustrated and patients are frustrated.

The children's services are appalling for the 21st century. Primary school dental checkups are way behind schedule, and in County Kerry, a child is lucky to be seen by sixth class if at all. For orthodontic services, a child is lucky to be seen by the age of 16, and that is only in situations where the teeth are so bad that the child will be seen.

This problem typifies the lack of attention by the Government.

It starts in the dental colleges, where 50% of the students come from abroad. There are no plans to fund or to increase the number of students passing through the dental schools in Dublin and Cork. The exodus of dentists from the DTSS over the past ten years, amounting to a reduction of 50%, is quite simply due to the fact that reimbursement rates are so low and costs are so high. Dentists are not going to run their practices at a loss. It is not economically viable to do so and it is making a mockery of Smile and Sláinte, the national oral health policy, which is now five years old.

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