Marie Sherlock
Dublin Central · Labour Party · Ireland
“That is why I want to see our local authorities moving from being just bystanders that license waste collection companies to actually controlling how the service is delivered.”
“That is why I want to pay tribute to all the people who are here today, including Stoneybatter Pride of Place, Phibsboro Village Tidy Towns and all the people working within their communities to keep them clean.”
“Panda’s parent company, Beauparc, sold for €1.3 billion in 2021 to an Australian investment firm. It is also co-owned by a US private equity firm. They are not in Ireland for the good of their health. They are here because they know they can make serious money. We know Greyhound’s parent company is registered on the Isle of Man.”
“The other important thing to say is that we did not hear any new ideas today, and I say that with the greatest respect to the Minister of State. We did not hear any ideas with regard to the profound challenges we have regarding our plateauing recycling rates and all the other issues that are there. That is disappointing.”
“I pay tribute to a lot of the work that many officials and workers in Dublin City Council do because, in some ways, their hands are tied behind their back. They recognise the issue with regard to landlord responsibility. I am very disappointed to hear the Minister of State's comments about landlord responsibility.”
“Dublin City Council was able to negotiate for the installation of ten-tonne compactors in the commercial areas, yet when it came to the residential areas, I understand the council tried to negotiate with the bin collectors on the roll-out of shared collection systems, but to no avail. That pretty much sums up our dysfunctional system.”
The complete record
Every one of 845 lines we hold for Marie Sherlock, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 11 of 17.
“I do not doubt all the efforts the Tánaiste and Government are making on the European and world stages to use every sinew of influence and diplomacy to stop the slaughter in Gaza, to call out the outrageous expansion of the illegal settlements and to call for the protection of the Irish citizens on the humanitarian mission on the Sumud flotilla, including Sarah Clancy, a constituent, and two Oireachtas Members. There are many others on that flotilla who all need the support of the Irish Government. I also do not doubt the shameful hostility that Ministers and our Taoiseach and Tánaiste regularly face from other countries when they back the proposal to partially end the Israel-EU trade agreement. It is an outrage that any EU country would vote to block that partial ending, not even a full ending, of the EU-Israel trade agreement.”
“The need for legislation is urgent and it needs to look ahead as opposed to just being reactionary regarding the trend we have seen over the past number of years. The Labour Party will not be found wanting regarding ensuring the swift passage of legislation through this House.”
“It is the health supports that are critical. When we submitted a parliamentary question to the HSE earlier this month regarding supports for those who wish to wean themselves off vaping, we learned that there are no resources. While we have a very well-resourced smoking cessation programme, the HSE effectively told us that it has not been directed or funded by the Department of Health to develop a "stop vaping" service. There is a critical need for that. We have to make sure members of this young generation who are vaping do not become the addicted smokers of the future albeit it is a slightly different substance from tobacco. It is critical that supports are put in place to promote awareness and help those who wish to come off vaping. There will always be substances that pique the interest of young people. We have all been young.”
“It may be vaping now, but nicotine pouches are something that are a bit more novel in Ireland. In some ways, they have been around for decades and centuries, but are newer in how they are currently packaged and marketed. There may be some other products in the future. We need legislation that is future-proofed with regard to the marketing and regulation of those products or any products that, effectively, contain nicotine. Countries such as the Netherlands, Denmark and Belgium have effectively set down the template or precedent to future-proof legislation so that any future products developed with nicotine will come under existing regulations with regard to how they are marketed. Legislation will only go so far. Regardless of the substance, the lesson is that prohibition will only ever do so much.”
“While tobacco is obviously a much more dangerous product relative to vaping, and vaping perhaps has its place in helping people wean themselves off smoking, nicotine is not a problem-free product in itself. We need to see urgent action by this Government, not only in terms of the legislation on single-use vapes, but also on the very aggressive marketing we have seen. Others have spoken about the flavours and colours. At a number of the music festivals this summer, including Electric Picnic and All Together Now, nicotine companies were out in full force handing out nicotine pouches. The aggressive marketing tactics by these companies are having an impact. We have seen that in the take-up of vaping by young people. We need to see an end to that very quickly. The other critical thing is we need to future-proof the legislation.”
“The reality is we do not really know the full health impact of vaping. We head from Professor Des Cox, a paediatric respiratory consultant at CHI, this week, who said that teenage vapers are three to five times more likely to take up smoking. We have heard others talking about issues with memory loss and concentration. The reality is, however, just like tobacco, that it may take a few decades to understand what the full impact of vaping is. We do know hazardous chemicals are contained within vaping. It will take some time to fully understand what they are. There is a horrible reality that we are now seeing a new generation of people with an addiction to a nicotine product.”
“I very much welcome today's statements. There is an irony that so much effort has gone into trying to reduce smoking rates in this country over the past two decades. We proudly talk about the smoking ban in commercial places. A lot of money has been spent by the HSE. There is a target for 2025 of a rate of less than 5% of the population smoking, but we know approximately 18% are still smoking. All the while, when the focus has been on that, the Government has taken its eye off the ball regarding a very serious and worrying trend over the past number of years, which is vaping. To see that the figure has grown from 3% of the population in 2015 to 8.5% in 2023 is something in itself, but to see that it is now up as far as almost 30% of young people vaping on a regular basis is cause for alarm.”
“In a country that is home to the Europe, Middle East and Africa, EMEA, headquarters of the biggest tech firms in the world, we cannot seem to get our acts together and integrate the two systems. The second biggest issue of the time was that our report could not have a cost impact on the public finances. Well, we live in a very different country now. We have lived in a very different country over the last decade, but nothing has been done to progress this. No one is denying that it is complicated or that there could be unforeseen losses that we need to mitigate, but the reality is we need to introduce the second-tier child benefit payment because for those families it is crucial that we ensure the State supports them out of poverty into work.”
“One of the longer term measures the Government should have taken and now needs to take is the second tier child benefit payment. The Minister's Government and the previous Government have sat on their hands on this. The Minister said it would take a period of approximately two years to put it in place. He has offered all the reasons it cannot be put in place now and not an iota of progress has been made by the Department of Social Protection in the 13 years since the advisory group on tax and social welfare issued its report at the height of the recession. I was on that advisory group and the biggest issue was the integration of the tax and welfare systems.”
“However, the Government can ensure that no more than 5,000 children are living in homeless accommodation coming into this winter. The Government can introduce an immediate ban on any child being evicted into homelessness. The stories coming into my and other offices of families facing notices to quit are harrowing. I am dealing with a family at the moment who have been on the housing waiting list for ten years. They are number six in their area of Dublin City Council and they are overholding. They have nowhere to go. The mother has had to reduce her hours because her child has a disability. She cannot get services for that child. The family has been forced into poverty by the Government because of failures in housing and a failure to provide adequate services for her child who badly needs them.”
“They are exposed to the sharp end of the cost-of-living crisis. The Minister for Social Protection and other Ministers come in here and trot out figures to show that inflation is down and that the energy crisis is not as bad as it once was. That is not the case. The rate of inflation may have eased, but prices have remained very high and the reality is that the cost-of-living crisis is hitting lower-income households the hardest. We did not come here today just to give out. We came with proposals, which the Government is disgracefully opposing. Child poverty cannot be turned around overnight. The roots of child poverty, including joblessness, low pay and extortionate private rents, cannot be turned around quickly.”
“These figures mean that the children in this country are living in a shameful paradox of plenty. It is not that in those nine years we have been moving from the bad situation of the economic crash to a better one. No. The number of children in consistent poverty almost doubled in 2024, rising by 45,000 children in one year alone. Despite rising wages, real household incomes, particularly among the lowest income households, have fallen in recent years. Thanks to important research by the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, we can now point to findings that show that lower income households experienced inflation of 7%, while better-off households experienced a rate that was two thirds lower at 5%. The reality is that lower income households cannot avail of the multi-purchase deals. They cannot put solar panels on their homes.”
“I second this motion and pay tribute to my colleague, Deputy Wall, and the rest of my colleagues for bringing it forward. Almost 250,000 children in this country live in poverty. That is one in five children living in poverty. That is a damning indictment of a Government of a country, which this year can boast that among EU member states it has the healthiest set of public finances, the highest rate of economic growth, the highest rate of domestic demand, the lowest rate of harmonised index inflation and a general Government budget that is in surplus. In this context, how can we be a shining leader among EU member states in a country that has had budget surpluses for seven of the past nine years, during which Fine Gael has been in power, propped up by and then joined by Fianna Fáil?”
“Last week, I brought it up with the Taoiseach and he was talking about work being the greatest way out of poverty, but this woman cannot work because of the failure of the State. We need to see real action and an explanation. We need that service reinstated as soon as possible for the children attending St. Michael’s House, and indeed for all the other special schools around the country.”
“Jade is able to drive her son every day to St. Michael’s House. She also has to take another child with her, who lives close by. That child is reliant on a wheelchair, but the car cannot take a wheelchair, resulting in the child having to go through the indignity of getting into a car without her wheelchair. While she can walk a few steps, she has to go through that every day. We are into our fourth week and there are no notions as to when we are going to see any change. What I wish to convey to the Minister of State is that Jade, after 17 years out of the workforce, was due to start a job on 1 September. That mother has had to put off starting that job because of the failures of the State and the failure of the school transport scheme.”
“Obviously, the Minister of State is hearing a lot of stories today about the failures within the school transport scheme. Every year at this time of the year, we sound like a broken record relaying these stories to the Minister of the day. As my colleague, Deputy Wall, relayed, it seems this year is the worst year we have seen in a long time. I wish to relay the story of Jade Black and her son, Rocco, to the Minister of State. Rocco is 16 and attends St. Michael’s House. They live in the north inner city in the middle of my constituency of Dublin Central. Four days before returning to school at the end of August, they were told the school transport provider was gone. There was no proper explanation. “Sorry for your inconvenience” was the phrasing in the email. The person driving the taxi for this child had been there since 2018.”
“The reality is that gardaí are really stretched and with respect to longer sentences, we have an overcrowded prison system. On stop-and-search powers, there was a report commissioned by the Minister's own Government in 2021, which said that such powers are not going to be effective in cutting down on knife crime.”
“As has been said previously, there is a 17-year-old boy in the Mater in a critical condition because of a vicious stabbing on Sunday night. Earlier this year, an 11-year-old was stabbed by another school pupil and the horrible reality across many of our communities is that knife crime and the carrying of knives is very real. Unfortunately, in the communities I represent in the inner city, there is somewhat of a siege mentality among some young men who feel the need to carry a knife. The response to date has been about more gardaí, stop-and-search powers and longer sentences, none of which are really going to address the problem. My question to the Minister regards the antisocial forum set up by the Government in 2020. Where is that now at and is it going to report?”
“Are we going to ensure the National Learning Network places for adults with a disability are there to provide them with an opportunity in life, to try to get some sort of training or perhaps go to employment or do something else, or will the Minister remain within the stricture that the budget has been filled and we have to leave these people until next year or the year after? To my mind, that is not good enough. It is at odds with the intent of the strategy. We need to make sure the proper resources are in place so that if a young adult, or an adult of any age, with a disability wants to access the National Learning Network, they are not barred from doing so because of budgetary issues in any of our ETBs in the country.”
“This means no child in Dublin 1 will ever be at the top of any waiting list for a special school. They will always be down the list because they are not in the catchment area. That has to change. With regard to the Department of further education and training, a wonderful system provided by the National Learning Network throughout the country provides specialist training to those persons, young adults in particular but adults of all ages, with a disability. Often they are people in very vulnerable situations. This year, the number of places in the City of Dublin ETB has been cut from 268 to 252. When we asked the question as to why this is happening, we were told the City of Dublin ETB effectively has to remain within its budget allocation. What is it, Minister?”
“We heard the Minister say the places are there but that they cannot be filled and that we now need to do something else and focus the health budget on capital infrastructure. I do not think it is good enough that we are throwing in the towel on recruitment with regard to therapies for children with additional needs in this country. There are waiting lists of two, three or four years for psychology and occupational therapy, and it is not good enough that those children are left on waiting lists. The Government needs to do an awful lot more to ensure those places are filled. My next point is on the Department of education and the Minister's previous portfolio. Sixteen CDNTs in the country do not have a special school in their catchment area. Summerhill CDNT in Dublin 1 in my constituency is one of these.”
“I very much welcome the fact we are having this debate today, and I very much welcome the words and intent in the national human rights strategy for disabled people. Of course, it is about the timelines and the resources, and we have yet to see any detail on these to implement and make good the fine words in the strategy. I want to raise a number of issues with the Minister. Her Department will have to take much more aggressive and leading role in effectively trying to make real, and make good on, these promises, some of them long-standing, to people with disabilities in this country. My first point is with regard to the Department of Health. There are hundreds of vacancies, particularly in CDNTs throughout the country and in primary care.”
“This needs real leadership from the Minister to ensure the Department of education and Bus Éireann get their act together and ensure there is school transport for all children in this country with special educational needs.”
“Every single year, there seems to be an issue with the school transport scheme and a last-minute collapse in arrangements. As a public representative, I am fairly fed up at this stage. There was a review last year, but things have not improved. In fact, in my view, it has never been worse. This issue does not just affect the child but also the family. I know of a family who were told four days before 1 September that they had no arrangement in place. The mother had spent 17 long years at home caring for her child and got a job, which she was due to start on 1 September. She now cannot start because she has no clarity as to when her child will get school transport.”
“This is putting those men in danger and causing great fear for communities, on which it has a real impact. Will the Tánaiste show leadership on this rather than pandering? The stakes are very high, particularly for the communities I represent in Dublin Central. It is like Fort Knox outside Leinster House right now. The barricades are up to protect us against protestors. We talk about the far right but the reality is there are people in the Tánaiste's Government-----”
“I am sure the Tánaiste saw the Minister for justice's comments yesterday on a case being taken by the Irish Refugee Council in respect of how refugees, those seeking protection in our State, are being treated. Those comments were absolutely outrageous. They were deliberately designed to inflame tensions, to further the tropes that are out there and to pit refugees against homeless people. The most despicable thing is that this is not a once-off. We saw the gleeful tweets about deportations and the tough language last weekend and now we have this. I am fed up. The reality is that the Government is manufacturing a crisis on our streets by forcing men seeking international protection to visibly go homeless before they are accommodated even though there are spaces in the international protection centres.”
“There are critical needs but two key actions can be taken now by the Minister of State in particular. First, there is one part-time counsellor in the whole country for the LGBTQ+ community. That number needs to be increased. Second, an organisation, Outhouse LGBTQ+ Centre, in my own constituency provides services to between 4,000 and 5,000 every year. Its funding will be in danger at the end of this year. We need to make sure it is supported to continue its excellent work for people in Dublin and across the State.”
“That is why the Labour Party felt so strongly today about tabling a motion on the Order Paper to call for a number of specific and clear actions: to replace the National Gender Service; and to establish a national clinical programme for trans healthcare in Ireland, ensuring a key role for GPs and a major recruitment of the specialists required for gender-affirming care. There are hundreds of people throughout this country being failed day in, day out because of the lack of GPs who want to recognise, work and support young people who are trans and want that gender-affirming healthcare. We also need a clear and unequivocal ban on conversion therapies. We need to ensure there is clear guidance for transgender healthcare for under-18s. We need to implement the recommendations of the 2018 Government review of the Gender Recognition Act.”
“There is much to be proud of and celebrate in the ten years since the passing of the marriage equality referendum and the Gender Recognition Act 2015, but it is incumbent on us to call out and name the lived reality of so many of our friends in the LGBTQ+ community. It is terrifying to see the very real mental health crisis happening at the moment. My colleagues and others referred to the research by Belong To and Trinity College Dublin, which refers to figures as high as 75% of 19-to-25-year-olds reporting suicidal thoughts. That is terrifying. The figures are even higher for those in the trans community.”
“There are key questions about how this very good model is consistent with this very political decision to effectively try to make the HSE deal with any cost overruns itself and take corrective measures and to pass the buck on to the HSE for what may be understandable cost overruns into the future. We need to be extremely careful about section 24 of the Bill in particular.”
“Those exclusions will cover the primary care reimbursement service, PCRS, for GP and dental care and the fair deal scheme. That is a massive part of our health service and there is a lot of unmet need within it. Will we truly have a proper system of population-based resource allocation in terms of a model of funding if we exclude that whole swathe of the health service? That is a conversation for another day-----”
“The key question now is how this tightened financial control of the HSE will be consistent with the roll-out of the population-based resource allocation into the future. The ideal is that the money follows the need. If there is going to be a political decision about what that need is as opposed to the actual reflection of the need on the ground, one validated by our clinicians and everybody else on the ground, then there is real potential for a disconnect there. Sláintecare is about ensuring that money follows the need. That is one of my biggest questions that has arisen today. We have not really had an opportunity to talk about population-based resource allocation, PBRA. Our understanding is that, in terms of the current plans of the Department, nearly half of all HSE expenditure is likely to be excluded from the proposed PBRA mechanism.”
“Last year, the Secretary General of the Department of Health stated: "It is [very] clear that it is not sustainable over the long term to continue to increase health expenditure in line with demand each year." That is a particular perspective. How demand is defined is something in and of itself. However, the reality is that there is a huge amount of unmet demand in certain parts of our health service at the moment. We spoke this morning about dental care, which is on the brink of collapse. Last night, we talked about endometriosis. The Minister has heard me talk lots of times about the lack of supports within GP care and the patchy GP service we have throughout the country.”
“While a big song and dance was made about how it is overseeing waiting list validation, we hear much less about its oversight of what accountability is expected when it signs the cheque for the individual hospitals. What is it getting in return? There are very clear questions from me and the wider Labour Party with regard to this Bill and how it will deal with this sum of money. One of my last questions relates to population-based resource allocation. This was the big idea last year. It is very consistent with Sláintecare, something the Labour Party hugely supports and is not well understood. Obviously, it is in its infancy. We still have to see a lot of the detail as to how population-based resource allocation will ultimately shape the allocation of financing within the health service.”
“Every company is entitled to provide a service, but there are real questions there about the duplication of work and incentives to work. I know the Minister has very eloquently been on the record calling this out and raising concerns, but the critical issue for those hospitals that have been relying on the NTPF money to reduce their waiting lists is what will happen to that funding. There is a separate question with regard to Naas and Beaumont hospitals in how they have used NTPF funding for what we understand are routine activities. There is a separate question about the oversight of the NTPF and its oversight of its own activity.”
“The other thing is that some people have made a lot of money out of the use of State assets and HSE-directly employed staff. There are very serious questions about who has been making money to reduce those waiting lists. The commitment now is that we will have it ended by next year, but who is going to make good on that money? This is a separate funding pot to the NTPF. Will the hospitals that have been appropriately using the insourcing funding get the additional resources to try to beef up with regard to staffing? To be very frank, the revelations about the period between the end of 2023 and start of 2025 in which sums of between €71 million and €91 million were spent are outrageous, particularly when we understand that a number of serving HSE staff are currently providing those services.”
“We can have a conversation another day about whether we should have every hospital in the country run as a HSE-owned hospital or whether we sustain those voluntary hospitals but the reality is the State is severely reliant on those voluntary hospitals and how we keep them in operation. A critical question is whether those corrective measures apply to the voluntary hospitals or not. The other elephant in the room for me relates to the National Treatment Purchase Fund, NTPF, which is not being addressed here as I understand it. This has been the subject of lots of committee hearings and interactions in the Dáil over recent weeks. However, there is a commitment now to ending insourcing, a very controversial measure to try to reduce waiting lists, albeit it has reduced waiting lists in some hospitals.”
“Efforts were made last year to reduce some of those voluntary hospital deficits. We have had media reports that pharmaceutical companies have had to put accounts on hold, in particular with regard to the Mater hospital because bills were not being paid on time. The Mater hospital itself is facing a deficit of almost €25 million. Beaumont Hospital is carrying forward €66 million. The reality is there have been bailouts. There has been some sort of agreement, but the reality is there is fundamental questions about the voluntary hospitals' continuation into the future and how the Department of Health is hoping to remedy that.”
“If that was to happen again and the political system was to fail to take responsibility for the level of demand within the health service, on whose shoulders should that responsibility for the underfunding lie? Is it with the Minister for Health? Is it with the Minister for public expenditure? Is it with the CEO and the board of the HSE? Section 24 of the Bill is very much putting it on the HSE. Will cutbacks be the norm over the next number of years in order to try to meet the straitjacket of a health budget set down every October? The other key question is in regard to the accumulated deficits, particularly within the voluntary hospitals, which is a very real issue. The accumulated deficits across a number of the voluntary hospitals were reported at €340 million.”
“The answer may be that it is both. When we look at the individual issues within our health service, there are fundamental questions about the operability of, in particular, section 24 into the future. I am looking in particular at budget 2024 announced in October 2023. With the benefit of hindsight, it was a complete work of fiction. The HSE had to come out and effectively out the Government by saying what the budget was providing for 2024 simply was not enough. We had to have a summer economic statement. We had to have a supplementary budget of €1.5 billion in the middle of 2024 and an additional €1.2 billion this year. The Government obviously messed up its figures and did not adequately or appropriately account for very predictable and ongoing challenges within the health service.”
“That can only be a welcome thing because, to be honest, for far too long successive Ministers have been more commentators on the HSEs performance as opposed to drivers. I believe the Minister very much wants to drive what the HSE is doing. The niggling question at the back of my mind in regard to the proposals here, in particular section 24, is what happens when something goes wrong? What happens when the CEO must inform the Minister that the HSE will likely exceed its capital or non-capital budget for the year, and then, what corrective measures does it need to take? Financial controls are important, and crucially important in the health sector, but the critical question here is: is the purpose to stay in budget or is it to meet the actual health demand that is out there?”
“When I was reading the substance of this Bill today, my overriding sense of it was that the one consistent feature of the health service over the past 20 years is change. Since the Health Act 2004 there has been so much chopping and changing with regard to our health management system. Some of that was out of necessity. There are some very real questions as to the timing of this Bill, particularly given that we are only a few months into the new regional executive officers, REO, structure. The question has to be asked: is this coming at a time to effectively tighten the screw on how resources are going to be managed and overruns dealt with within the HSE? On the face of it, this is a technical Bill, designed to give the Minister greater influence over the HSE delivery plan.”
“Oral care and dental care are hugely important for our population's health, and the State is doing far too little to support those involved in providing them. A crucial point is that for far too long people feared the procedures carried out by dentists; now they fear the length of time they have to wait to try to access dental procedures. That is unacceptable. If we saw the same drop in the numbers in GPs that we are seeing in HSE dentists, and those participating in the DTSS, then we would not be here in the Chamber debating with these small numbers. We would be having a much larger national conversation. We need this Government to take dental services and how they are resourced much more seriously and ensure that many of the things called for in Deputy Stanley's motion are implemented.”
“Obviously, those students who are coming have to pay but there have to be real questions about the third level institutions providing dental training and about what are we doing to ensure that we retain those dentists into the future. The system of PRSI benefits was enormously popular prior to being cut back in 2009. It was enormously popular for people in being able to go to their dentist and avail of a range of services paid for through their PRSI. That has been scaled back dramatically. People can now only avail of a very limited number of services. Ultimately, if one needs any sort of proper work done, one must go private. It is high time that we ensured an expansion of the range of benefits afforded to people by means of their PRSI.”
“There is another reality within our dental schools and in the context of the profile of students within those schools. A large number of those graduating from our dental schools are not staying in this country. They are going abroad. From talking to some dentists, I understand that 20 years ago the majority of students were Irish born and from the Middle East. We are now seeing a large number of students from Canada and other parts of the world coming here, availing of world-class training, paying for it, obviously, and then leaving very quickly after graduating. This is a serious issue. The State is spending significant amounts of money on that training.”
“We know that some dentists are going down that path. For others, staying within private practice is certainly a much more exciting prospect because of the range of services they get to provide. There is a real issue where dentists with a number of years' service go into the public system because the range of services they provide is arguably more limited. We need to look at the schemes that existed in the past. The vocational trainee scheme, for example, was in place 20 years ago. There used to be five places across the Republic whereby a dental graduate would effectively work under the mentorship of a private dentist and within the HSE for a 12-month period. This provided fantastic training before they went out into private practice or public practice. That scheme has been gone by the wayside for many years. It needs to be reintroduced.”
“We also have to get serious about the dental treatment services scheme and the number of dentists who are no longer participating. There has been a drop of 38.4% in just five years. The number participating is down to 833 according to the responses received by my office to parliamentary questions I submitted. If we saw this level of drop in GP numbers in this country, it would be a national scandal. Yet, because it is dentists, we are not seeing the same reaction. We need much greater ambition and direction on the part of the Ministers of State, Deputies Butler and O'Donnell, to ensure that dental services are properly resourced. The other big part of the jigsaw is recruitment. In reality, if you are a dental student graduating in this country, botox and aesthetics is a very lucrative path to go down.”
“They are a critical part of the infrastructure because no dentist can function unless they have a dental nurse by their side. The key devastating part of all of this is some of our most vulnerable children are those who are being hit hardest. Children with additional needs or special needs who require care under general anaesthetic are obliged to wait two years or more for that care. Kids in Kildare have to travel to Dundalk in order to be treated under general anaesthetic. Kids in Waterford have to go to Cork for such treatment. I am aware that in one part of the country adults requiring specialised care involving general anaesthetic have to wait five years for treatment. That is absolutely unacceptable. We have to get serious about recruitment to the HSE.”
“Not only have pay and numbers had an extraordinarily devastating impact on dental employment within the HSE over the past number of years, it is also the case that the recruitment process, where it does exist across some of the health regions, is painfully slow. One principal officer told me yesterday that it took 14 months for his role to be filled. It is not just about dentists; it is also about nurses. Another dentist working within the HSE has told me that he cannot provide clinics because he does not have the nurses available. A business case must be prepared to try to recruit a dentist. They will be lucky if that recruitment process commences by Christmas. This is completely unacceptable. It is perhaps the silent aspect of the motion before us. While we are talking about dentists, it is also about dental nurses.”
“There was a time when the school assessments used to happen in second class, fourth class and sixth class. There were even senior infant assessments in some parts of the country. Now, in many parts of the country assessments are limited to sixth class, or will be in the coming months. Of course, by the time those children get picked up, the result is that there are very high levels of decay and increased levels of extractions. The extremely important orthodontic checks are not being picked up because the dentist is the first point of contact and screening with regard to the need for an orthodontic check, especially when children are coming up to their teenage years. This is leading to much more complex and expensive care being needed as those children go into adulthood.”