Dental Services
Seanad Éireann — 2026-09-22
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Marian Harkin (IND), Sligo-Leitrim

I thank the Senator for the opportunity to address this important issue on oral health promotion and prevention services. I am taking the matter on behalf of the Minister for Health, Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill. The Minister acknowledges the importance of health promotion and disease prevention, and the need for our services to reflect this. The Dental Health Foundation, which the Senator spoke about, is an independent registered charity with a key aim: to support improvement in oral health in Ireland through advocacy and oral health promotion.
The Minister would like to acknowledge the important work that the foundation carried out in its function as the secretariat to the Irish expert body on fluorides and health from 2004 to 2023. The expert body was put in place as an independent group to advise the Minister for Health on issues relating to community water fluoridation in order to discharge the Minister's obligations under the Health Act 1960 to monitor the general health of the population who are receiving fluoridated water. Since 2023, the fluoridation surveillance working group has acquired this function in line with best practice for public health surveillance.
The national oral health policy, Smile agus Sláinte, which the Senator mentioned, aims to radically reform oral healthcare services, recognising the need for an entirely new approach to oral healthcare to meet the needs of the population into the future. The policy is in line with the 2024 WHO global strategy and action plan on oral health, which has a focus on oral health promotion and prevention.
While reform is progressed through the national oral health policy, the Minister is determined to ease the pressure that people are facing in accessing oral healthcare. In practical terms, this means improving access to the public oral healthcare system, especially for children and medical card holders. Officials in the Department of Health and the HSE are finalising a focused two-year action plan to deliver real improvements on the ground. It will aim to respond to sustained service pressures, workforce constraints and long waiting lists, particularly for children and people with additional needs. It will focus on a small number of clear priorities, including reducing waiting lists in the school dental programme, orthodontics and expanding the access programme for people with additional needs and disabilities. Over the next two years, the aim is to stabilise services, reduce waiting times and make access measurably better for patients while laying the groundwork for longer-term reform.
The HSE has responsibility for operationalising oral health promotion and prevention services and is funded by the Department to do so. Included in this is the need for keeping up to date with modern evidence and best practice. The HSE currently funds the Dental Health Foundation through a grant-aid agreement under sections 38 and 39 of the Health Act 2024. Therefore, matters relating to additional funding for the foundation are appropriate for the HSE to consider in line with business needs, avoidance of duplication, value for money and budgetary processes.

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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/seanad/2026-09-22/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-22