The Irish Dental Association (IDA) has said that nearly 500 more dentists are needed across the private and public service immediately, to meet the needs of the population and to replace retiring dentists.
Chief Executive of the IDA Fintan Hourihan told the Oireachtas Committee on Health that oral health is not prioritised by Government in terms of promotion, funding or service delivery.
He said that 80% of spending on dental care in Ireland is out-of-pocket expenditure, which shows that State assistance towards the cost of dental care is extremely limited.
Mr Hourihan told the committee that €5m was announced in the Budget for the school screening backlog, but no extra public service dentists are allowed to be hired with these funds.
He said that last year, just under 100,000 children were seen under the school screening programme, which is less than should have been seen in second, fourth and sixth classes.
He told the committee there is an almost 10-year backlog in accessing services in parts of the country where children are only receiving their first appointment when they are in their fourth year of secondary school.
Mr Hourihan said that there are currently two-year long waiting lists for treatments requiring general anaesthetic and that dentists are being forced to choose which children they believe are suffering the most pain and treat them ahead of patients who have already been waiting months or years.
He added that the number of public-only dentists in the Health Service Executive (HSE) has dropped by almost a quarter over the past 15 years to 254 last year.
IDA past president Dr Caroline Robins said that dentists are often seeing young patients for the first time in secondary school when it is too late and the dental damage has been done.
She said that this week she had to extract a tooth from a 10-year-old boy who was failed by the school screening system and it should not have been necessary but was not the fault of the parents.
Sinn Féin health spokesperson David Cullinane said that his office is inundated with cases where people have no access to dental care under the Dental Treatment Service Scheme (DTSS) or who have to travel large distances to be treated.
The Department of Health said that Government allocated over €200 million to the provision of oral healthcare last year.
In addition, it said an unprecedented extra allocation of €21 million has been invested to support the Health Service Executive to improve oral healthcare services this year, including €15 million via Budget 2023 and €6 million via the Waiting List Action Plan 2023.
