Matt Carthy: Government Failing Children on Dental Care
Matt Carthy sets out Sinn Féin's motion calling for urgent action on dental and orthodontic waiting lists as families in Cavan, Monaghan and across the state face prolonged delays. He warns that thousands of children are waiting for treatment, many for more than a year, and calls on the government to invest in public dental services and workforce planning.
Overview: Sinn Féin tabled the motion after the government failed to recognise dental care as an essential part of healthcare. Matt Carthy outlines the scale of the problem: long waits for dental and orthodontic treatment, children leaving primary school without screening, and families pushed into private care they cannot afford.
Local impact: Carthy describes parents in his constituency contacting him in desperation as children wait years for braces and other treatment. He highlights counties such as Cavan and Monaghan and raises concerns about referrals to Dundalk Hospital where children are not guaranteed the orthopaedic care they need.
Workforce and education pressures: The speech details staffing vacancies in local dental services including hygienist, surgeon and dental nurse posts, and criticises the practice of using dental university places to recruit international students rather than to bolster the domestic workforce.
Proposed solutions: Matt Carthy calls for urgent measures: reduced orthodontic and dental waiting lists, investment in public dental services, a dedicated public-only dental contract, and workforce planning to ensure graduates work in the domestic system. He demands a dental treatment service that actually works for the people it is meant to serve.
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Sinn Féin brought this motion forward because government simply refused to understand that dental care is an essential part of healthcare. And across the state, particularly in counties like Cavan and Monaghan, we have families that are being failed by dental service that's stretched beyond capacity. Statewide, as you've heard, we have thousands of people, mostly children, who are waiting for dental or orthodontic treatment. Many of them, actually a significant proportion of them, are waiting well over a year. Many children are leaving primary school without ever receiving the dental screening that they're entitled to. And all of these figures represents real children and real families. In my own constituency, parents are contacting us in utter desperation and frustration because their children are waiting years for orthodontic treatment. Imagine that. How did people feel that they need to contact their politician because their child needs braces, because their child needs healthcare? But that's the scenario that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have allowed to develop. Many people are forced and stretching themselves to go privately and then there's a whole cohort of others who just cannot afford that option and they feel that they're letting down their children when it's actually this government that are letting them down. We've seen it in terms of the staffing position in Monaghan around the vacancies within the local dental service. A vacant dental hygienist post, a vacant general surgeon post, a vacant dental nurse post. All of those vacancies have been in place for a prolonged period of time. Never mind the situation at Dundalk Hospital when children are referred there because you're as well telling children that they're not going to receive the orthopaedic care that they need. This cannot stand. We need urgent action to reduce orthodontic and dental waiting lists. We need investment in public dental services, a dedicated public-only dental contract. We need workforce planning. We need to ensure that dental places in our universities are actually being utilised by those that we can encourage to actually work in the domestic system rather than being used to sell to international students to make up for the shortfall of government funding for our third level sector. We need a dental treatment service that actually works for the people it's supposed to serve.
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