Sir, - I refer to your article "Dental Budget comes to £12 million" in the Eastern Health Board Supplement (October 29th).
The reason the Category One list of 809 patients is cleared and Category Two list half cleared is that the board changed the criteria for treatment and applied these retrospectively to the waiting list. Anything up to 3,000 patients, who had been waiting up to four years for treatment, were removed from the list and told they no longer qualified for treatment under the new guidelines.
This was an immoral action and its legality is also quite questionable, as these people had been given a verbal contract for treatment at some future date.
I would like to advise the parents of these patients to pursue their entitlements in any manner they see fit, either through their public representatives or legal adviser. The article completely avoided any criticism of the board in this respect. - Yours, etc., Michael Keane, Orthodontist,
EHB Clinic,
North Strand,
Dublin 1.