Dáil debates
Wednesday, 16 July 2025
Dental Treatment Services: Motion [Private Members]
4:20 am
Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent Ireland Party)
I welcome Patrick. It is great to see a fellow Dromin man in the Gallery.
The year 1968 is memorable to the Minister of State because his father was one of the members who set up St. Joseph's Foundation. It was set up to help vulnerable children and adults. It is still running and is a massive service that covers north Cork and south Limerick. Maybe it is time that history repeats itself. He could be the Minister of State who can deliver for young children in this country by reintroducing dentists into our areas and encouraging dentists through a work-life balance that will welcome them to Ireland, where they will be able to get affordable housing. They would be able to have a work-life balance when they come here and we would have the dentists as we had years ago. Maybe it needs something like what the Minister of State's father did in 1968, which everyone is grateful for. We need something like that now.
We need to reintroduce, number one, training and the offer of free college places. Other countries are doing it. They are sending people here to be trained. They go back to their own countries where they have to work for two years because they were given their training for free. Why can we not do that here? Why can we not get the front-line services by getting people to their college courses and giving them the training for free? We could ask them in return that they spend two or three years here for having their training done. Would that not encourage people who would love to be a dentist in this country but cannot afford to be one, if we now back them?
It is the same thing with our doctors and nurses. Other countries are doing it. I spoke to a doctor yesterday. Of the people she was in college with, four from her class were being paid to come here from other countries to train to be a doctor. It was in their contract that they had to return to their own country to do two years there because they had got their placements and college for free. Maybe it is time we did this to encourage people. It has gone on for decades. It affects young children and adults throughout the country. Children are going through the whole of primary school who are not getting their dentistry done. Maybe it is time to look for a change.
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