Tipperary town, in my constituency, with a population of over 5,000 people and serving a further 10,000 in mid-Tipperary and east Limerick in its hinterland, has no dentist accepting public patients, medical card holders. That is absolutely and totally unacceptable. It is proof positive that the dental and oral health service in this country is totally in disarray and is failing patients very badly. In 2024, the number of dentists operating the dental treatment services scheme was 810. That was down from 1,452 in 2012; a drop of 642. Currently, the number in the scheme is believed to be less than 600. The very small number of dentists employed by the HSE in the public dental service is also reducing by 30, with 65 unfilled posts as of early this year. The year 2019 saw the Smile agus Sláinte plan for the dental service. That was a strategy that was supposed to move the outdated curative care emphasis to a preventative care and health promotion model. However, seven years later, in 2026 there is no implementation of that plan. There is no plan; it is still apparently under consideration. The service has deteriorated since. Of the 208,000 eligible school children, only 104,000 were screened - 50% - and that figure itself was down by 31,000 on the 2017 figure. Between 2009 and 2023, there was an €800 million cut in the funding for dental care for PRSI and medical card patients. Under that dental treatment services scheme, there was a drop of 94,000 in treatments between 2012 and 2024. That was down from 395,000 in 2012 to 301,000 in 2024. As other speakers said, there is a two-year waiting list for patients in pain but requiring general anaesthetics. That is totally unacceptable. Of course, there is also the six-year wait for orthodontic treatment. Parents are being forced into private orthodontic treatment costing literally thousands of euro, sometimes as high as €6,000, €7,000 or €8,000, or their children must suffer on. Orthodontic treatment, as we know, is time sensitive and should be available when necessary. Middle-income and low-income families suffer most due to the lack of the public orthodontic service. Even in the private service, dentists tell us that 25% are not accepting new adult patients and 33% are not accepting new child private patients. The ratio of dentists to patients in this country is one to 2,160, therefore we are at the lowest quartile of OECD in that regard. The dental services is in chaos. What we need is a fully-funded resourced and staffed public dental service, and that should be established as a matter of priority. That requires a determined focused and multifaceted strategy to retain the existing dentists and to recruit additional dentists into the public dental service. To do that, a significant number of additional training places for dental professionals at third level must be put in place. Currently, there are only 70 dentists qualifying each year. That will increase in the next academic cycle to 87 due to the new dental school at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. However, because of the fact that these colleges use fees from overseas students, 44% of students in them are from overseas, so it is almost certain that up to half of the students will never practice in Ireland. We should also remove dental nurses, dental technicians and hygienists from the ineligible list for employment permits and add them to the critical skills list. That would allow recruitment from areas outside the EU. Direct access to dental nurses, hygienists and technicians should be introduced in a similar way that pharmacists can now prescribe in limited regulated circumstances. The legislation in this area is well over 40 years old. It is absolutely outdated and requires urgent updating. I support this motion and compliment Deputy Cullinane and Sinn Féin on bringing it forward.

Sentiment score: -0.05