THERE are almost 10,000 children on a waiting list for dental screening in the HSE area which covers Limerick, a local TD has been told.
Labour Party TD for Limerick Conor Sheehan was told in answer to a parliamentary question that 9,992 school children in the Mid West are waiting for a routine dental screening.
And the HSE has admitted that its school screening programme is 18 months behind schedule, with many children not being seen until they are in secondary school.
Deputy Sheehan told the Limerick Post the figures are “absolutely disgraceful”.
“It should bring shame to this government. We are becoming a country of waiting lists,” he said.
“This is not just a statistic — this is 9,992 children potentially facing avoidable pain and long-term dental problems because the State isn’t doing its job.”
Deputy Sheehan hit out that “tooth decay remains one of the leading causes of childhood hospitalisation, and early screening is a key part of prevention”.
“That so many children are being left behind is utterly unacceptable. Our public dental system is beyond breaking point.”
The Limerick TD said that the school dental screening scheme “needs at least 75 more dentists just to bring it back to where it should be. But successive governments have underfunded and understaffed the service for years.”
“Dentists are walking away from the public system because they simply don’t have the resources to do their job. This is creating a full-blown crisis in children’s dental care,” he said.
“There is a commitment in the Programme for Government to implement the national oral health policy and to recruit more public dentists. Where is that plan now? Where is the urgency?”
Deputy Sheehan said that Labour is “calling on the government to treat this as the emergency it is, and to act without delay to recruit dentists, resource the service, and implement the national dental strategy, Smile agus Sláinte”.
In a statement to the Limerick Post, a spokesman for the HSE said that “HSE Mid West regrets the delays in providing routine dental screening in the region for children up to the age of 16 years”.
“The screening service for first, second, and sixth classes in primary schools each academic year is currently running approximately 18 months behind schedule,” the HSE spokesman said.
“We continue to explore all options to reduce wait times and 90 per cent of children in first, second, and sixth classes of the 2022/23 academic year have been called for screening.
“In addition, 60 per cent of the 4,492 children in these classes for the 2023/24 academic year have been called for screening.”
The spokesman continued that the HSE estimates that “5,500 pupils in the 2024/25 sixth class cohort could be in second year in secondary school before they are called for their school dental screening”.
He noted that recruitment and retention of dental surgeons “has been a challenge for the HSE public dental services across the country. In the Mid West, a senior dental post has been advertised on three separate occasions and failed to fill. Primary care continue to prioritise the filling of vacant posts in dental services.”
“Primary Care management work closely with the principal dental surgeon to ensure the most efficient and effective use of available resources.”
