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

We have made some good progress on the training. The RCSI has opened a new community train-and-treat facility in Sandyford and has just started building one in Connolly Hospital as well. We are making some good progress there. On screening, the seven-year-old child mentioned by Deputy Bennett needed much earlier screening, which could have been provided by a dental hygienist. The actual dental work that might be needed has to be done by a dentist. When we are trying to identify problems at an early age, we need prevention, screening, cleaning and good habits; all of the things the Deputy has talked about. We are not using our workforce well enough at the moment. I want to see the role of dental hygienists amplified. They should be given better opportunities to do programmes in schools and to have more direct access to patients. We have to look at every lever. We will train more dentists but when we do so I would like to see a commitment to public service. We have increased the fees generally for HSE-funded dentistry, by between 40% and 60% in some instances. On average, we have increased them by 40% for doing certain procedures and we still cannot encourage dentists to come, at the scale that we want, into that practice, potentially because of the allure of more lucrative products.

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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