Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

I commit to trying to expand access to oral health and preventative oral health in every way. We need to look at the role of dental hygienists within the dental profession. In every other aspect of workforce planning in healthcare, we recognise that we do not have enough healthcare workers to meet our need. As I mentioned earlier, we are trying to have pharmacists work at the top of their expertise in their profession in order that they can diagnose basic common conditions. We now have an agreement with them that they will do that, but they should be working at the top of their expertise. We will try to have pharmacist technicians there to support them. In the same way, there is a much bigger opportunity for dental hygienists. We have advanced nurse practitioners and clinical nurse specialists. We have all of these advances in practice. Dental hygienists can play a particularly important preventative role and community support role. I am not saying they can provide all of the treatments - of course that is not the case - but I do not think we have come to the end of workforce planning in this respect. I know the people of Deputy O'Shea's constituency would welcome the opportunity to see a dental hygienist at a much earlier stage than has been possible to date. I have some work to do to try to support that.

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