Dental Services Dail Éireann — 2026-01-13 ============================================================ Colm Burke (FG), Cork North-Central I thank the Minister of State. I am frustrated by this. The population has increased by over 40% in the past 25 years. September last year was the first time we increased the number of Irish students training for dentistry, but it is not a 40% increase. We need to increase the number of places in UCC and in Trinity College Dublin. How is it that the RCSl was able to open an outreach clinic for which it got funding and UCC, which applied earlier, is still in the negotiation stage? I do not understand why it is being put on the back foot at this stage when UCC has given a clear commitment to expand the number of places available to Irish students. It has to take in people from outside the EU because it can charge full fees and that is how it is able to keep the dental college going. It is important. I have parents on to me every week now because their children cannot get access to dental care because they are on long waiting lists. In Cork there is a waiting list of over 12 months for anyone who is a medical card patient. We have a situation where a huge number of private dentists who were providing care for medical card patients have now opted out. We have gone from 1,452 down to around 600 dentists who are now providing care for medical card patients. The public service waiting list is increasing because of the additional demand now that the private practices are not offering a service. I do not understand where the Department is getting its figures. We will attend the health committee tomorrow and I have seen the presentation that will be made to us by the representatives of the Department of Health. As far as I am concerned, it is a basket case of a reply we will be getting tomorrow because it does not represent what is happening on the ground. --- 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/dail/2026-01-13/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:30+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-01-13