Fewer than 620 Dentists are now actively participating in the medical card scheme nationally. Shortcomings in publicly funded dental services affect our most vulnerable in society including children waiting on the school screening service. Minister for Health is now asking dentists to sign up to a scheme on the “understanding” that reform is coming.
• Irish Dental Association says: “We say to the Minister that hope is not a strategy, not least given how often all promises about the commencement of talks on a new scheme have been broken and no discussions have taken place in sixteen years.