Local Sinn Féin TD Brian Stanley has called on the government to lift the embargo on oral health staff.
Stanley has said that the situation regarding waiting times for the school dental screenings scheme in Laois and Offaly has reached crisis point.
At present, there are a total of 7,057 children waiting for basic dental screenings under the school dental programme in Laois.
He said: “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”.
According to him these children should have already been seen to in 4th, 5th and 6th class in primary school but instead are left waiting up to 6 years longer than that.
This has been described by Caroline Robinson, Chairperson of the Irish Dental Association as “missing a golden window of opportunity” affecting the health of these children.
Sinn Fein have received information on over 100,000 children who have gone to secondary school without having ever been seen to by a dentist.
A briefing from the Irish Dental Association reveiled that Ireland has the lowest percentile of population to dentist ratio in the developed world.
Stanley said that “This is akin to a third world service we are receiving in Ireland”.
There is a Government embargo that only 2.4 fulltime dentists are employed by the HSE to provide dental screening in the schools in Laois.
As well as this Stanley was also informed that these dentists are expected to cover adults under the DTSS medical card scheme. According to him this totally “unrealistic and not sustainable”.
He said: “With this embargo in place, no additional staff will be appointed”.
According to Stanley the only solution to this problem is for dentists to be employed in the public system and to offer students coming out of dental schools the oppurtunity to find work as a publicly employed dentist with the HSE.
