Linda Nelson Murray (Fine Gael)

I echo Senator Ní Chuilinn’s thoughts and wishes for the support we have received from everyone in the Seanad since we began. We are total newbies. Lots of us are brand new politicians and greatly appreciate the support. I echo what Senator Ní Chuilinn said about the workers in the background because we all use our social media clips and little videos so I support the workers in all of their endeavours.

I have spoken on this previously, but I wanted to finish off the year by speaking about it again because it is so important and I will bring it back up in the autumn. The analysis from the Irish Dental Association shows we need an extra 500 dentists across the private and public sectors immediately. We are down 642 dentists who are on a DTSS contract nationally during the past 12 years. Focusing on County Meath, in quarter 4 of 2017, some 7,711 children were seen but in quarter 4 of 2023, 2,378 children were seen. It has not been good and children have not been able to be seen. In the public dental service the lack of dentists has led to a situation where fewer than half of the children who should be seen under the school dental programme have been seen and there are children in parts of the country who are facing a ten-year backlog.

The previous time I spoke about this I mentioned my own children. They have a condition that is growing in Ireland called molar incisor hypomineralisation. It means the enamel is not growing on their teeth. Only that I was lucky enough to be able to bring them to a private dentist, it would not have been a good story. They have had a lot of procedures and one operation. Many children have this condition and if children do not see public dentists in schools until they are in sixth class we will be in a lot of trouble in regard to children's teeth in the future.

I am delighted we have opened another 20 student places in Dublin but with only 90 people graduating every year and 45 of them returning to various countries, while we are adding 20 places we need to add a lot more to that. We need more investment in our colleges. We need specific training in other aspects of dentistry. I thank the Minister for Health, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, for the work she is putting in but I ask for more to be done so more dentists can be qualified in future, particularly for County Meath.