Dental Services
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-05
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Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (FG), Dún Laoghaire

I agree with the Deputy. At the moment I am trying to develop a programme with Pat Healy in the HSE, who is doing excellent work on a very targeted programme of intervention to get on top of screening in schools and make sure we can address the backlog, particularly in relation to orthodontic work and specialised orthodontic work. I have given a direction to all of the various regions that I expect our new surgical hubs to have a measure of dental capacity in them, whether it is once a month or whatever it happens to be, so that access to theatres is there equally for dentistry in the community and to ensure we have pathways. I acknowledge there is a considerable work to be done and I will bring forward a plan and proposals on this.
I welcome the Deputy's engagement with the dental associations. We do need to hire more public dentists. They have suggested to me that part of the graduation programme could be that qualifying dentists spend a period of time in the public system, something I would greatly welcome. It would give dentists who do not have an opportunity to train in public practice the opportunity to be in public practice. It is too private, too remote and too disconnected from the public health system. If part of the training was that we got the benefit of a graduate spending a year in the public system, I certainly would be very much in favour of that proposal.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-03-05/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:44+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-05