Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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As this is a service matter, I have asked the Health Service Executive to respond to the Deputy directly.

As the Deputy may be aware, management and administrative grade staff in the Fórsa union in the HSE commenced industrial action on Friday 6th October. As a consequence of this industrial action, members in these grades are not engaging with political forums or processes. As a result, the question asked by the Deputy may be delayed in receiving a response directly from the HSE.

Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
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1456. To ask the Minister for Health whether there are plans in place to overhaul the dental treatment service scheme to ensure that practitioners continue to remain on the scheme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [56288/23]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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The Dental Treatment Services Scheme (DTSS) provides dental care, free of charge, to medical card holders aged 16 and over. Since May 1st 2022, there has been additional prevention treatments included and a 40-60% increase in fees paid to dentists across most treatment items. From January to October this year, 142,450 additional treatments have been provided under the DTSS, with over 25,600 extra unique patients treated when compared with the same period last year.

The Government is committed to fundamentally reforming dental services, including the DTSS, through implementation of the National Oral Health Policy, Smile agus Sláinte. The Department is working closely with the HSE to ensure the establishment of focused structures to drive implementation of the Policy. The HSE has now appointed a Strategic Reform Lead to drive Policy implementation across the organisation and to move forward in 2024 with developing new services for both adults and children in line with the Policy. This will include work on planning new services for medical card holders.

While it will take a number of years to bring reform to complete fruition, there will be an early emphasis in implementation on addressing the current issues, including the reform of the provision of services for medical card holders.