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Seanad Éireann · 2025-10-14

Gnó an tSeanaid - Business of Seanad

CC Mark Daly · Administrative Panel

Party shown is the one held on 2025-10-14, frozen at parse time — not the speaker's party today.

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Summary of this debate

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Senator Alison Comyn - the need for the Minister for Health to make a statement on the lack of suitable dental chairs and beds to treat people with disabilities. The Senator raised the N71 specifically, which is an important gateway for west Cork, as the Senator has rightly said.

It asks for a national review of special care dentistry capacity, including access to theatres and anaesthetic support, immediate funding to expand dental surgery facilities beyond Dublin into every region and the installation of a specialised dental chair for routine and ongoing care in every primary care centre in the country so that people with disabilities can access preventative and restorative dental treatment locally without needing hospital referral.

Built by scoring every sentence in the debate on how distinctive its language is, then quoting the highest-scoring ones back word for word and in the order spoken. Nothing is paraphrased or invented — if a sentence appears here, it was said in the chamber. Drawn from 7,526 words across 28 contributions by 9 speakers.

Most used terms in this debate

How often each word appears across the whole debate, ranked by how distinctive it is to this debate rather than common to all parliamentary language.

dental 29
senator 55
oral 24
morocco 13
survivors 19
health 33
west 23
cork 25
innishannon 8
care 24
sahrawi 6
people 41

The full debate

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CC Mark Daly this contribution

I have received notice from the following Senators that they propose to raise the following matters:

Senator Alice-Mary Higgins - the need for the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade to provide an update on Ireland’s position on the amendment of protocols 1 and 4 to the Euro-Mediterranean Agreement establishing an association between the EU and its member states and Morocco, arising from the Court of Justice of the European Union rulings on Western Sahara.

Senator Sarah O'Reilly - the need for the Minister for Education and Youth to make a statement on the additional supports requested by the survivors of industrial and reformatory schools who are currently on hunger strike outside Leinster House.

Senator Noel O'Donovan - the need for the Minister for Transport to provide an update on the allocation of funding to upgrade the N71 in west Cork.

Senator Alison Comyn - the need for the Minister for Health to make a statement on the lack of suitable dental chairs and beds to treat people with disabilities.

Senator Cathal Byrne - the need for the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration to make a statement on plans to establish a second Garda training college.

Senator Nessa Cosgrove - the need for the Minister Housing, Local Government and Heritage to make a statement on the enhanced defective concrete blocks grant scheme.

Senator Joe Conway - the need for the Minister for Education and Youth to make a statement on the application for an extension for Scoil Gharbháin, Abbeyside, Dungarvan, County Waterford.

Senator Victor Boyhan - the need for the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine to make a statement on the closure of mink farms in Ireland and the status of the compensation scheme agreed with the affected operators.

Senator Garret Ahearn - the need for the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine to make a statement on the recent €50 million funding announcement for the tillage sector.

Senator Robbie Gallagher - the need for the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality to provide an update on the timeline for the completion of the replacement facility at Clogher House, Rathcorrick, County Cavan.

The matters raised by the Senators are suitable for discussion and I have selected Senators Alice-Mary Higgins, Sarah O'Reilly, Noel O'Donovan and Alison Comyn and they will be taken now. The other Senators may give notice on another day of the matters that they wish to raise.

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