Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent)
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506. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the present status of the public dental treatment programme; and the steps that she is taking to ensure that persons are getting access to the scheme. [38908/22]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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Treatment Benefit is a PRSI-based scheme which provides free dental and optical services, and assistance towards the provision of audiological appliances and hair replacement products, to people who satisfy certain qualifying conditions, and to their dependent spouses/partners.

The Dental Benefit Scheme is a popular scheme with 893,000 claims paid by the Department in 2021 at a cost of almost €51million.

The department pays the full cost of an oral examination once a calendar year. Over 686,000 examinations were paid for in 2021 at cost of €22.6Million.

To June 2022 there have been 617,000 payments amounting to €35Million on dental benefit.

Dental services under the Dental Benefit Scheme are available across the country. There are a total of 2,975 dental panellists at present. A full list of dental providers is available on gov.ie.

A customer wishing to avail of their dental benefit entitlements must first establish their eligibility. This can be done through mywelfare.ieor by contacting a dentist registered as a panellist with the Department.

The Department ran a public information campaign on the availability of the Treatment Benefits scheme earlier this year.The information campaign commenced on Tuesday 31 May and ran for 2 weeks.

The campaign provided information to highlight the dental, optical, aural and hair replacement services to insured workers, the self-employed, retired people and their dependant spouse/partner who have the required number of social insurance (PRSI) contributions.

The campaign also highlighted that changes announced in Budget 2022 have now come into effect, in particular that the minimum requirement for PRSI paid contributions for people aged between 25 and 28 has reduced from 5 years (260 weeks) to 9 months (39 weeks).

The Deputy should also note that the Department of Health have a scheme for those with a medical card and this is a separate scheme to the treatment benefit scheme administered by my Department.