Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2026-05-19 ============================================================ Brian Stanley (IND), Laois The Taoiseach does not have the specifics for County Laois, but I have given them to him. Most of the statistics I gave him are only a week old. The three public schemes are in crisis. I did not get to raise the boy with special needs I mentioned to the Taoiseach, the Minister, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, and previous Ministers. After six years of waiting in severe pain with periodontal disease, severe inflammation and bone loss, he has to be treated under anaesthetic in hospitals. I have raised this a number of times. Only now is he getting an appointment for a consultation. That gives the Taoiseach the scale of this. Three dental schemes need to be fixed; that is key. Will the Taoiseach now step up recruitment in Laois? There is a particular problem in County Laois. The number of people in training places in dentistry has to be increased. We have to ensure there is active engagement between HSE management and dentists in County Laois to ascertain why private dentists are not taking them on. There are eight doing this in Offaly, which is good, but----- --- 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/2026-05-19/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:46+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-19