Dental Services Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-10 ============================================================ Manus Boyle (FG), Nominated by the Taoiseach I thank the Minister of State for coming. Since I have been in the House, I have been calling for more dentists and dental hygienists. For decades, we had a school dental service, which played a vital role in ensuring early detection and through which children from first class, to fourth and sixth class typically received oral health treatment. The Killybegs dental service played a vital role in the areas of Glencolumbkille, Carrick, Kilcar, Bruckless and Dunkineely for decades. This surgery had a patient list of more than 500 children. People are now being forced to travel long distances to Donegal town. The point furthest away, Glencolumbkille, is 54 km from Donegal town. If people have to go for emergency treatment to Ballyshannon, it is 72.6 km or an hour and ten minutes of travel. We had a service that was working well. Everyone was happy with it. Let us consider the time parents will now have to take off. My children attended the dental service in Killybegs, which was first class. I could pick them up from school and bring them back and would normally be gone for an hour or an hour and a half. Now, when I have to travel to Donegal town, I will be away for perhaps half a day if I take them out of school and bring them back. There was no consultation I know of with anyone in the local area. This just happened overnight and the people of the area feel disadvantaged. When we had something that was working very well in a rural community, it should have been kept, enhanced and reinforced, because parents just do not have the time to be running here, there and everywhere. I have nothing against Donegal town. It has a first class, state-of-the-art service. This should not be seen as an issue with Donegal town; this is not. I wish that service all the best. It is great to have it. I wish we had the same in Killybegs. For fair treatment, there was no consultation about this at all. This was taken away from under people's noses and it is really affecting parents and families in my area. They are coming to me in their droves about it and it needs to be sorted out. Perhaps the Minister of State will help me out with this. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-12-10/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:26+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-12-10