Danny Healy-Rae: Kerry families face 2,000-person dental backlog

I reckon first of all I want to thank Sinn Féin for bringing this very serious, important motion here to the Chamber this evening. I have encountered so many people looking for orthodontic treatment for their children, and elderly people looking to get seen to buy dentists when they have only got a medical card. More than 2,000 people, mostly children, are waiting for dental and orthodontic treatment in the south-west region, and that's Cork and Kerry. I have Deputy Collins coming at it from his side. Children are waiting for braces for more than two years. And we all know here if they don't get the treatment, they get the braces when they need them. They can outgrow the possibility of the braces ever being workable or have the desired effect. I dealt with a number of young girls who lost confidence and wouldn't leave their rooms. They barely go to school, but after school no interaction with their friends or go out in the evenings when they were 16 or 17 years of age, because they felt they weren't looking right and they should be looking better and they were waiting for this treatment and they wouldn't get it. Minister, I don't know whether you're listening to me or not, but I'd say you'd want to be listening to me about this, and maybe you'll listen to the others. We all have the same story, and there's something wrong. They're not getting the treatment that they should get at 12, 13 and 14 years of age, because when they go beyond that, they've gone beyond the time that the braces and the work would have any genuine redress on the problem that they have. Not all parents can afford to pay for dental care. It's very extremely, it's very costly, and a lot of parents can't afford this, and it has lifelong adverse effects on children. Currently I can't find any dentists in Kerry except in the middle camp, because the middle camp doesn't work, and it doesn't cover the cost. And the question for you, Minister, is are you giving enough to the HSE, are we as taxpayers giving enough to the HSE to pay the dentists properly? They all can't be wrong. We've great dentists in Killarney and in Kerry, but they're saying that it doesn't pay them to do, that they have to put on more staff to cover the public patients, and the money they're getting for to do it doesn't cover them. So that question needs to be addressed. Do the HSE have the money or are they going elsewhere? We did, like they're doing with a lot of other things, that question needs to be answered. Many elderly people have to travel outside the county, and I found two dentists, and I believe they're elderly dentists, who would take the patients and have taken the patients from Kerry. And look at the distance. I can't say where it is, because I know these people would be overpowered with people coming to them, and maybe they wouldn't do my patients at all. But this is terrible, Minister. We all know, like John Riley, the publican across the road from us, he was a great man for summarising things. He used to say, any of us that know children, they have trouble with teeth coming. But he used to say, they have trouble coming and trouble going. That's the story with teeth, and people have a lot of pain. And when a person is in pain and needs to extract the tooth, surely to God that people that have a medical card and have the funding to pay for the extraction of a tooth ourselves, surely we should be able to do that, Foreign Minister. And I'm asking any person in pain, whatever the pain it is, that's hurting them, and it is driving them crazy, and a toothache would drive you insane, out of your mind with pain when it goes on for days and days. And I'm asking to do something about funding the dentist properly to ensure that these people can get treatment locally, rather than travelling outside the county of Kerry. You know that if you travel outside the county of Kerry, and if you're not living in a place like Dingle or Cares Iveen, you have to travel two hours before you get to the county bonds anywhere, and to go to Limerick Park. And it's not right. And we have great, as I said, great interest in Kerry, professional people, very good people, but they can't afford to do the teeth extractions, not to mind fillings, for what they're being reimbursed by the HSE. And do the HSE, what are the HSE doing with the funding? Are we giving them enough funding, Minister? That's what you need to ask. And if we are, what are they doing with it? Because they're not giving it to the dentists. And there needs to be a re-evaluation. Every dentist can't be wrong. They're all of the same story, it's not paying them to do it. And we're not coming in here making this up, Minister. I'm telling you the God's gospel truth. We have it every day, every week in our office, people looking to see can they get a tooth pulled. And they can't find the dentist that will take the medical care. That's the gospel truth, Minister. I'm asking for God's sake to do something about it, because that's how I need it.