Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)

I thank the Minister of State and I am sorry that we are dealing with this so late in the evening. What action is the Department of higher education taking to increase the number of dental training places in our universities? This is in view of the fact that no increase has occurred in the past 25 years while the population of the country has increased by 1.6 million people.

Moreover, will the Minister of State explain why 44% of training places in our universities are made available to non-EU students?

I will give the figures for final year students in Trinity College Dublin: 46 students, of which 25 are Irish or EU students and 21 are non-EU students. In University College Cork, there are 61 students of which 25 are EU students, which includes Irish students, and 36 are non-EU students. They are the figures for final year in our colleges. We have a huge increase in population and we have not responded.

To give an idea about treatment, in 2012, 394,399 availed of it under the public health service. In 2023, the figure was 283,000. That is down more than 100,000. In 2012, there were 1,432 dentists offering to provide dental care under the public scheme. In 2024, it was down to 810, yet our population had increased dramatically. There is also an additional issue in that we now have an older population. Going back 30 or 40 years, most older people tended to have dentures. That has now totally changed so there are now more older people who require dental treatment as well. The Department of Health has acknowledged that there are 2,420 dentists in the country. That is 47 dentists per 100,000 people or one dentist per 2,125 people.

We need to forward plan. Even if, in the morning, we decided to increase the number of places, it would still take five years before the students would be out there. There is an easy way to deal with this and the Irish Dental Association has already set it out quite clearly. The places are there but we are giving them to non-EU students. We need to decrease the number of non-EU students and increase the number of Irish and other EU students. We do not have to put extra money into it, except to replace the money the colleges are getting from non-EU students with money from the Department so we can improve and increase the number of training places available. It is not that we have to build new structures or provide more equipment. We do not. It is already there. The Irish Dental Association has suggested that we decrease the number of non-EU students to 20%. It did not say to cut them out completely but to reduce the number. We have to give more funding. I do not care what answer the Department gives tonight. This has been put on the back burner for far too long. We were to build a new dental school in Cork, we had identified a site, we got the planning permission, funding was not available and the whole project was abandoned. Now we are in a scenario where we have population growth, people are living longer and we do not have the dentists to look after them. Now is the time to take action and we need to take it before 1 September.

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