Health Services
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-09
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Shane Moynihan (FF), Dublin Mid-West

I thank the Minister of State for that very comprehensive response. Core to a lot of the emerging healthcare needs we have in Ireland are training and skills, so I am very pleased to see that one of the planks of the Minister of State's answer was making sure we have enough trained professionals. I think that needs to be at the core of how we future-proof our public services and make sure we are able to address demand in the future. I also welcome the steps that are being taken towards embedding this into a community care model, which I think is what these integrated eye care teams will deliver. They are contingent on the number of trained professionals.
I ask the Minister of State to take it up with the Minister for Health in a broader piece around the prescribing powers for optometrists to enable them to be a core pillar of how we engage directly with children in the community and to avoid them necessarily having to even go as far as the integrated eye care team, especially if medication or treatment can be prescribed in a low-cost setting.
While all the other developments the Minister of State described are very welcome, there is a piece around early detection. Even with the model that is laid out at the moment, it seems to be a referral or reactive, which is a very good and strong way to find this. Given that we know this is going to have increased protection, studies from the US and South Korea suggest that myopia affects 50% of the population towards the middle of their lives, and that that, as the Minister of State knows, brings added risk of eye disease later on in life, how do we build on that early detection piece, in the same way we would have done with dental care and on the back of public health nurse checks in the first years of a baby's life? How do we keep an eye on - pardon the pun - the development of eye health and eye care but also address and ensure we use the data to inform monitoring and planning and learn about the prevalence of myopia? One thing the increased use of screens has taught us is that nobody would have anticipated that it has had a very detrimental effect on the overall state of the eye health of children and adults in the country, which has led to this increased prevalence of myopia. I thank the Minister of State for the response, and she might respond to the other points too.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:05+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-09