Mattie McGrath: Tipperary Left Without Public Dentists

I too want to comment to Sinn Féin on this motion forward tonight. It's a shocking and alarming situation and the old saying one and all again, agus tuchaisead, I mean praise the young and they will come, but how can they come forward? I mean it's a totally shocking situation. As I said dental services are in crisis. In my own constituency of Tipperary we now face the shocking reality that Tipperary town, which is one of our major towns, no longer has dentists providing services to the public patients. This is not acceptable, but the government have repeatedly ignored the warnings and the pleas for change to the dental medical care scheme. I have raised this issue, these concerns many times here and repeatedly with the Minister for Health, several Ministers for Health, yet we continue to see a complete failure to act. The government has ignored the costs of dental inflation and expect private dentists to absorb the costs and that simply is not going to happen. It cannot happen and it won't happen and anybody in business knows that for very good reasons it can't happen, they can't afford to do it. The HSE pays a maximum of €109.96 for up to three repairs, yet the laboratory fees alone for that work can range between €120 and €150. Like that's just a light up, simple maths, you're not going to stay in business if you try to do that. Before dentists even practice in their own time, staff are overheads, they're already operating at a loss. These are substantial issues which the HSE just won't listen to or just won't engage with and the dentists are expected to absorb them and continue to treat public patients. It can't happen, they're disappearing from the system and you can't blame them. Dentists simply cannot continue like this. As a result, many have made the decision to withdraw from the scheme entirely. Others are limiting themselves to basic pain relief only. A small minority of dentists are still trying to provide care under the scheme but they are at their wit's end. They are carrying the burden of an underfunded system and they are doing so without the support they need or deserve. It's just not acceptable. When you see a problem, you should try and fix it because this is getting worse year by year. The figures have been quoted here of the thousands of children waiting and children especially when they go into their teen years, late teens even, and basically they need treatment. For them it's a big issue, especially young girls, it's a big issue. We talk about mental health and all but these issues where they need assistance with their teeth should be sorted out. I want to pay a fulsome and special tribute to Dr. Daniel O'Connell of Clann Mell Dentists. For nearly 40 years, Dr. O'Connell has served this community with professionalism and dedication. He has been sounding the alarm on this issue for years but like so many others, his voice has not been listened to. Now the entire community is left without public dental care. He has been warning about this and warning and warning but nobody was interested in listening. I want to salute him and his staff and his technicians, receptionists and all. He couldn't meet a finer practice in Clann Mell. The situation is untenable. The government must urgently review reimbursement rates, engage meaningfully with the profession and take immediate action to restore confidence in the public system. I received an email this evening from a mother, to bring tears to a stone, about her son. He was referred to something for attention but he just said, can we do anything? The son, first name Noah, was approved by the HSE for publicly funded orthodontic treatment. His orthodontic issues being assessed as severe, it's enough to qualify. When this was originally approved, they were told as the parents that Noah would be at least 18 before he was called for the treatment. Imagine that, 18. Having discussed this with our orthodontists who advised that 18 would be way too late for treatment to be effective. We made a difficult decision to begin privately at the end of February 2026. On the 5th of March 2026, I received a call from a person of the orthodontic department of the HSE Waterfront, who informed me that the boy would be moved forward and would receive funding beginning November 2026. I explained that we had started the public system and stated that her son would be a private orthodontist based in County Cork and they would be willing to remove him from that and remove the wires they'd put in if they went back out of the public system. She was told that that wouldn't be a problem, but hey pesto, November 2026, and on that basis the wires were removed in anticipation of his public treatment. But sadly, just think of this, on the 12th of June 2026, some two weeks ago, they received a further call from Maria informing them that the National Oral Health Office had withdrawn the offer of funding and the boy, along with about 200 other children, would no longer be entitled to the treatment. And would be placed back at the end of the waiting list. What kind of incompetence, what kind of disgraceful treatment is that to give a family, to give a young boy that needed that treatment, and then when he was forced to go private as a doctor, and then got a call saying he was not public, and then was withdrawn from that, and he would do from that, he'd get the public system, and now the money he'd put together, it's a body blow, it's disgusting, and someone should be held accountable for that. For more UN videos visit www.un.org