No consultant orthodontist or specialist orthodontist working in Louth

Louth Labour TD, Ged Nash has slammed the government and the HSE for what he said is a growing crisis in providing orthodontist services for children in Louth.

Deputy Nash said: “It is clear to me that there is a crisis in Drogheda and Dundalk and across the county, in terms of the provision of orthodontic services for children.

“After a number of complaints to my office from constituents on the issue, I submitted a Parliamentary Question to the Minister for Health.

“While I am waiting on a more comprehensive reply from the HSE, the Minister for Health has told me that there is no consultant orthodontist or specialist orthodontist working in Louth, currently.”

He added: “The Department of Health cannot even provide me with accurate waiting times for the service, because essentially, the service does not exist.

“While the Minister for Health says there is an active recruitment process to engage professionals for these vacant posts, I’m not sure how active a process can be when you consider these posts have now been vacant since the end of 2022.”

Deputy Nash said the posts were advertised for a year, between May 23 and May 24 and there were no applicants and in June of 2024, the HSE engaged employment agencies to help and still no applications were forthcoming. 

“I understand that since then, there has been recruitment campaigns in Northern Ireland for the posts and online, with no success," he continued.

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“The abject failure to recruit for these vital positions in our community points to a greater crisis in recruitment in the health services which this government must get to grips with.”

“Children are waiting years to see an orthodontist and that queue is only getting longer as the failure to recruit for the post, rumbles on.

“It’s an intolerable situation and children in our county, deserve better from a government who is failing in its duties to provide the most basic of public services at a time when the public purse is supposedly bursting at the seams.”