Louth dental services unable to cope with demand - TD

Local Sinn Féin TD for Joanna Byrne, has said there must investment in a public dental scheme that will prioritise school screening and medical card holders, including the development of a public-only dentist contract, saying that access to dental care for people with a medical card has collapsed with more than half the dentists having withdrawn from the Dental Treatment Services Scheme.

Speaking in the Dáil last week Deputy Byrne said “Week in and out, my constituency office is inundated with people trying to access dental and orthodontic services. The population in Drogheda and south Louth is growing faster now than it ever has before but vital services are not by any stretch keeping up with the population growth. In fact, they are getting worse under the Minister's watch. The number of dentists working under the dental treatment services scheme in Louth dropped between 2019 and 2025. There is huge population growth, but the level of service provision is declining.

The number of children waiting for dental treatment under the primary school dental checks scheme can only be described as scandalous. One parent told me her daughter has been on the list for braces since fifth class. She is 20 now and has never received the public care she needed. That is a nine-year wait and it beggars’ belief. Half of primary school children are leaving school without ever having received a screening appointment. Consultant orthodontic vacancies have been unfilled since 2024 in Louth. The total number on school dental screening waiting lists in the county continues to increase year on year. A total of 2,800 children were waiting to be seen and 718 were waiting for orthodontic treatment at the end of 2025.

Parliamentary question responses provided to me on dental care in Louth in recent months have stated that the capacity of the service is based on available resources. There are limitations to clinical capacity, we are told. Data shows ongoing service pressures, reduced staff levels, and declining levels of oral health assessments. This is not news to anyone trying to access services or to those providing services. It surely cannot be news to the Government. This has not happened by accident. Rather, it is a direct result of underinvestment, failure to plan and a hands-off approach by successive Ministers. The Government's inaction on dental services leaves those languishing on waiting lists either in pain or in significant debt. Either way, they have been completely failed. The cost of the Minister's neglect of this issue will be felt for decades. Action is long overdue on the dental care crisis in this country.

Party colleague and Dundalk TD Ruairí Ó Murchú said the orthodontic care system in Louth is ‘failing miserably’ to provide services to patients, some of whom are waiting years for treatment, the Dáil heard last week.

Deputy Ó Murchú said the government had accepted that ‘dental care, especially orthodontic care in this State, particularly that provided by the public system, is not fit-for-purpose in any way, shape or form’.

There are massive problems with the access to dental services for people with medical cards, Deputy Ó Murchú said.

He said: “The fact is a person is incredibly lucky on a medical card if he or she can find a dentist and avail of it, but we have all seen that even in those cases, a person may be offered an extraction at times instead of a filling, on the basis of how not fit-for-purpose the system is.

And he highlighted a response he received to a parliamentary question about orthodontic care and Louth County Hospital which said: ‘At this time, the Department is under-resourced, with a vacant consultant orthodontist post. There is a 1.0 whole-time equivalent for the Louth-Meath region, and 1.2 whole-time equivalent vacant specialist orthodontist post in Dundalk clinic.

‘The specialist orthodontist position has been vacant since January 2024. In August 2024, a recruitment campaign was halted due to the pay and numbers strategy, leaving only one valid vacancy to fill’.

Deputy Ó Murchú said: “The latest update I received on this is the post has been readvertised. It does not matter about the closing date, we need to see somebody in position.

“I could say the same about the specialist orthodontist 0.2 WTE post which has been vacant since March 2025 and, again, ‘readvertised lately’.

“We need to see that filled. The consultant orthodontist post has been vacant since late December 2022. This is not working at all.

“I also have a letter from a company saying it offers cross-Border orthodontic health care for patients. It states that the contract that was offered to it has failed miserably and it cannot even offer a private, short-term solution”.