Sir, – A recent RTÉ Prime Time programme highlighted the increasing chaos in the provision of dental services in this country. In 2014, I wrote to you highlighting the difficulties patients and dentists were experiencing due to the lack of progress in publishing a new oral health policy. The policy, Smile agus Sláinte, was eventually published five years later. In January 2019, The Irish Times received a commentary from the Department of Health indicating that “the policy will be implemented over a seven-year period. This will allow considerable time for engagement with the relevant stakeholders.”
In the intervening four years, nothing has happened with regard to its implementation and certainly there has been no engagement with this stakeholder.
It comes as no surprise to long-serving practitioners like myself that over the past 30 years that dental services have become non-existent for the majority of the general public and just as its title implies, the current oral health policy puts primary emphasis on “Smile” (as long as you can afford it) and “Sláinte” comes a poor second in the eyes of the Department of Health. – Yours, etc,
Dr PÁDRAIG Ó REACHTAGÁIN,
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Roscrea,
Co Tipperary.