Over 3,000 Offaly children awaiting dental screening

Local Sinn Féin TD for Laois/Offaly Brian Stanley has strongly criticized the "chronic waiting times" for the school dental screening scheme in Laois and Offaly which he has described as being "at crisis point."

A recent reply to a Parliamentary Question from the deputy revealed that 3,338 Offaly children are waiting for basic dental screening under the school dental programme, with over double that number in Laois, at 7,057.

Most concerning of all is the number of these children that are not being screened while in primary school and are a number of years in secondary school before they receive their first screening’’ said Deputy Stanley.

“In the case of Laois, there are 893 children in 4th year of secondary school, who have never been seen under the school dental scheme. Shockingly, there are 2610 children that are in 3rd year or above in secondary school in Laois that have never been screened under the school dental scheme and the corresponding number in Offaly is 214.

These children should be seen in 4th ,5th and 6th class in Primary School, but are instead being seen up to six years later in secondary school’’.

“This has been described by Caroline Robbins, Chairperson of the Irish Dental Association, as “missing a golden window of opportunity”, with huge negative impacts on dental health.

Sinn Féin also received information that currently over 100,000 children across the State have gone to secondary school without ever seeing a dentist. An Irish Dental Association briefing detailed that Ireland, a supposedly rich and prosperous country, is in the lowest percentile in the developed world in population to dentist ratio. "This is akin to a third world service we are receiving in Ireland,” Deputy Stanley said.

“The root of this problem is the Government recruitment embargo which means that there are only two wholetime equivalent public dentists employed by the HSE to provide dental screening in the schools in Offaly and only 2.4 wholetime equivalent dentists in Laois. I am informed by the HSE that these dentists are also expected to cover the adult DTSS medical card scheme. This is totally unrealistic and not sustainable.

The HSE have also told us that the recruitment embargo is still in place at this point and relates to the number of staff employed by the HSE. They state that “The embargo does not allow them currently to appoint any dental service staff that are not at consultant level’’.

“While the embargo is in place, no additional staff will be appointed.

It’s clear that the only real solution is for public dentists to be employed in the public system and this means offering students coming out of dental schools the opportunity to have a job as publicly employed dentists with the HSE. It means offering them career paths and we’re again calling on the Government to lift the embargo on frontline staff as oral health is important.

Their approach will cost more in the long term, and many will suffer because of it.