Families are contacting me regularly about dental care. The level of frustration and desperation is shocking. The truth is that in many parts of the country people cannot access their dentist. In parts of the country people with a medical card will not find a dentist. That is how bad the dental service scheme is. In relation to the school screening programme, according to the Government, every child is entitled to see a dentist before they leave primary school. However, the vast majority will never see a dentist and get their teeth examined under that programme. The system is in such chaos and has such bottlenecks that thousands of students will continue to leave the school system without ever seeing a dentist. That is absolutely wrong. There are so many families in Ireland who simply cannot afford to go private. These children are suffering and that suffering will go on into adulthood because their teeth will no longer be baby teeth. That is the truth of it. We need to look at the dental Act. At present, there are bottlenecks in the system. For example, a dental hygienist cannot be seen until a dentist refers a patient to the public system. The fact that someone cannot access a dentist means that, therefore, they cannot access a dental hygienist. That is a bottleneck that needs to be addressed. Workplace planning is important. This Government is not planning for the future when it comes to dental care, as with many other services in this country. I submitted a parliamentary question to the Minister for further education. The data I received was alarming. It showed that 40% of students studying dentistry in Ireland are from outside of the EU. That is extraordinary. We are training so few dentists in the country, yet 40% are from outside of the EU. The remaining 60% are a combination of Irish, British and EU students. This Government is not even capturing that data. This is really important. We need to understand how many Irish students are in the system. At a time when dental care is in crisis and the Irish Dental Association has said we are currently about 500 dentists short, the solution to this problem is that the Government gives a significant number of the limited places to students from outside of the EU, the vast majority of whom will not be retained in the Irish system. This crisis is going to go on and on. I have listened to Deputies from around the House outline how many years we are into this crisis. A crisis is temporary. This is now complete and utter gross mismanagement of the system. We need to address workplace planning in the system, expand the places and protect those places for Irish students.

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