Dental Services
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-22
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Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (FG), Dún Laoghaire

I am in complete agreement that this simply has to improve. While the services are there, looking at the wider workforce generally in relation to dental care, if we separate it out from orthodontics, how we use the workforce has come up a number of times. We train dentists at quite a considerable cost to the State. We do that because we want dentists to be available to do dental work, both in private practice and for the State. We want children to have screening. I do not want to deviate too much but I have been consistently concerned by one issue. This has been acknowledged by the Irish Dental Association and ADI, which is the group training dentists.
The issue relates to the number of dentists who are being trained in Irish State-funded facilities and the drift towards cosmetic dentistry, the scale of practice in injectables, Botox and other things being done by dentists. At a two-day conference of the dental association last May, one full day was dedicated to injectables. I want to train dentists to do dentistry on children.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-22/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:32+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-22