Children are waiting up to 10 years to see a dentist in some parts of the country due to backlogs in the school dental screening service, according to the Irish Dental Association.
Under the Health Service Executive (HSE) dental service children should receive three check-ups in primary school in second, fourth and sixth class. However, the strain on the system is such that some children are not receiving the first of these dental checks until they are in their fourth year of secondary school, the association said.
“This means that some children are not receiving an initial check-up until they are 16 years of age, and are, therefore, missing out on vital early intervention, resulting in more drastic treatment or, in the worst cases, extractions being required during the formative teenage and early adult years.”
The delays are caused by understaffing and a lack of resources in the public dental service, the association said, with the numbers of practising public-only dentists having dropped by almost one quarter in the past 15 years, decreasing from 330 in 2006 to 254 in 2022.
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“This means the HSE will need to hire 76 dentists immediately to the bring the service back to the levels it was at 15 years ago.”
The lack of HSE dentists is also affecting the delivery of care to other vulnerable cohorts, including those with special care needs and patients waiting on essential public orthodontic treatment, it said.
In addition to the delays for general check-ups there is a two-year waiting list for treatments requiring general anaesthetic, with dentists saying that they are being forced to choose which children they believe are suffering the most pain and treat them ahead of patients who may have already been waiting months or years.
“It is shameful that children, special care and other vulnerable patients are not receiving the dental care they are entitled to, with many suffering unnecessarily later in life as a result,” said chief executive of the Irish Dental Association Fintan Hourihan.
“The simple solution is to adequately staff and resource our public dental service. Too many children are slipping through the cracks despite all the evidence showing that the younger a child is when they are first examined, the less likely the need for major treatment or extractions later.
“Dentists, however, are reporting seeing older children who are requiring three or four extractions and root canal treatment. This cannot be allowed to continue. We are urging the Government to address this as a critical priority to ensure children are receiving the care they are entitled to under our public dental system and at the earliest opportunity to save them from unnecessary and drastic treatments later.”
The association is holding a seminar for dentists in the public service in Portlaoise on Thursday.
