Donna McGettigan (Clare, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish to discuss the ongoing decline in the dental scheme for medical card holders in County Clare. I have raised this issue time and again. The Irish Dental Association has also raised it and has made repeated calls for the scheme to be overhauled. The association states the scheme does not work either for dentists or patients and that a lot of lip service has been paid to it but nothing is happening.

In November 2021, as a county councillor in Clare, I tabled a motion calling for the then Minister for Health to engage with dentists in Clare to prevent a total collapse of the scheme and to ensure funding was available to boost public dentistry in the county in the coming years. At the time of this motion, there had been a 46% reduction in investment in the dental scheme between 2017 and 2021, according to the Irish Dental Association. At this time, we also saw a reduction in the number of dentists signed up to the dental scheme, resulting in only 16 dentists enrolled in Clare. We were in fear of a total collapse of the scheme.

The decline of the scheme is replicated throughout the State. The number of participating dentists has declined by 50% in the past decade. In June 2024, I submitted a parliamentary question to the Minster after several constituents contacted me to say their dentists were not offering the scheme anymore. I was shocked to find out that 12 dentists had signed up but only eight had submitted claims for reimbursement, which meant realistically we only had eight dentists. The constant crisis in UHL has also had a huge impact on dental patients. Some patients, such as children, require anaesthesia to have teeth extracted, but when UHL enacts its surge capacity, the day ward is filled with patients from accident and emergency and day procedures are cancelled. Of course, there is no dental general anaesthetic service in Ennis.

It is a near certainty that everyone in the House has constituents who are suffering due to the failure of previous Ministers to fix the dental scheme, which includes the Minister of State's constituents. People are being left in pain or, worse still, they have to watch their loved ones suffering. Dentists often detect eating disorders and certain types of cancers, so these could also be going undiagnosed. Tooth decay can have serious medical consequences if left untreated. In addition, people are only entitled to two fillings per year under the scheme, so if they have a problem with another tooth, it may have to be extracted when it could have been saved. This is causing a moral issue for dentists as they are about saving teeth.

There are nice words in the programme for Government, including that there will be new contracts, new recruits and lots of dentists, but no facts or figures. What meaningful, tangible steps will the Minister of State commit to now to address this serious issue and give some sense of reassurance to patients and their families?

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