Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)

I thank Deputy Stanley for tabling this important motion, thus giving us the opportunity to place a particular focus on oral health and oral healthcare in the Dáil during the final week of this term. I am really pleased to have the opportunity to speak on the motion. We all how the importance of oral health. It affects everything including how we eat and speak. It can even affect our self-confidence, but, for far too long, it has been considered and treated as an optional extra in our health system. Dental healthcare is too costly and too hard to access for far too many and this has to change.

One of the biggest challenges in our system is the shortage of dentists. The dental treatment service scheme, which provides dental care for most medical card holders, has seen the number of participating dentists fall by 50% over the past decade. There were about 1,600 dentists practising previously. That number is now down to 810, and only 600 of those are actively providing dental care.

Community dentists are the backbone of accessible oral healthcare in our communities. They provide essential preventative and treatment services directly within communities, especially to those who need it most. They really help to reduce pressure on our hospitals and wider emergency services. It is for this reason that I really welcome the initiative by the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, RCSI, and its recent establishment of a brand new bachelor of dental services degree. It will be the first community-based undergraduate dental degree course delivered in Ireland. In order to advance the education of students on this new programme, work by the RCSI and the HSE on a new dental education centre at Connolly Hospital Blanchardstown has commenced. This new centre is set to open in September of 2027 and will provide state-of-the-art facilities for training dental students while also delivering local care in the community. It is expected to support over 375 dental students annually and provide approximately 30,000 treatments in the community.

What has really piqued my interest in that this is the pilot programme under which supervised dental students will provide free dental care to local residents. That is going to help to improve access to care for those who face barriers, particularly financial ones. It is going to give students valuable practical experience and will be a major boost for oral healthcare in Dublin 15, an area I represent. As well as giving that immediate benefit to residents in Dublin 15, we will now have a new stream of trained dentists emerging from third level every year whose entire training has been about serving the community. We will have a brand-new type of dentist, and that is something we should really welcome.

Oral healthcare is healthcare. We need to treat it that way. It is about fairness and making sure that no child or older person feels left behind because of cost or a lack of access. The work under way shows what can be delivered when we have ambition that is backed with action. The Government must show that same ambition at national level to back our dentists, serve our communities and treat oral health as the essential element it is. This means fixing the dental treatment service and giving medical card holders the same level of access to dentists as everybody else. It means investing in prevention and early intervention in order that we do not have to rely on emergency care and emergency situations to pick up the pieces. We are getting this right in some pockets of the country but that is not enough. We have to build on that success and ensure there is access to dental care in every part of the country.

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