The Irish Dental Association has warned that long delays in school screening for children means dental diseases are not being picked up as soon as they should.
Chair of the IDA's general practitioner’s group Dr Will Rymer said the current government proposal is to move pediatric care to private dentists and put the onus on parents.
This will result in a significant number of children being left behind, he said, and most likely these will be the most vulnerable children with the greatest need.
The IDA has called on the Department of Health to urgently address the backlog, which in some parts of the country is running up to 10 years.
Children who should be seen by a dentist in second, fourth and sixth class are having to wait until fourth year of secondary school for their first visit, the group said.
Speaking on RTÉ's Today with Claire Byrne, Dr Rymer said Laois and Offaly are seeing particular delays.
"The screening service in Laois, children are being seen in transition year, and in Offaly they're at second year," Dr Rymer said.
"So by that point in their education it's likely that the early presentations of dental disease that we would like to have picked up much earlier in the development have increased significantly."
Dr Rymer said significant number of dentists have left the medical card scheme since the pandemic because the system has been under funded and under resourced since 2009.
The scheme is financially unviable, he said.
"Unfortunately, the recent increases that the minister provided to the dental scheme are wholly insufficient," Dr Rymer said.
"We saw cuts in 2009 and the price of those items remaining constant.
"So unfortunately there's been a significant gap between the cost of the treatments and the remuneration to the dentist.
"So we have a scheme which was established in the 1990s and the dentistry that we're providing is probably sort of 1970s standard and dentists doing it to the best of their ability.
"But it's very demoralising to watch the profession moving forward and seeing the quality of your care are stuck in that era."
