FG say dental queue caused by closed shop

MORE THAN 21,000 children are waiting an average of three years for specialist dental treatment.

Figures confirmed by Health Minister Mícheál Martin yesterday show:

Children must wait at least 12 months on average before a consultant orthodontist will assess their needs.

After that they go onto a waiting list for an average of two years before they get treatment.

The Southern health board has the longest waiting period of three and half years with 6,733 children waiting for assessment and another 3,184 children on the official waiting list for treatment.

The Midland health board has the shortest waiting period with a waiting list of 12 months for treatment of category B patients (those with less urgent needs for treatment) and no waiting list for Category A (those with serious problems such as clefts).

Mr Martin, who revealed the figures in the Dáil, said 20 new public service specialist orthodontists were currently being trained to help tackle this backlog.

And health boards have received €9.69m in the past two years to purchase private orthodontic treatment for the children on the public waiting list, to recruit extra staff and build new facilities.

However, Fine Gael believes this will do nothing to tackle the root cause of waiting lists the closed shop operated by dentists and orthodontists here.

"It will take years before these waiting lists are cleared because of the severe restrictions on the numbers of specialist orthodontists that can be trained in any one year," Fine Gael health spokeswoman Olivia Mitchell said.

Fine Gael want the Competition Authority to tackle the restrictive practices of the dental profession and the accreditation board which puts a limit on the number of orthodontists who can be trained every year.

But the chief executive of the Dublin Dental Hospital, Brian Murray, has rejected the claim that the orthodontic profession is a closed shop. He said the number of trainees they take in every year has to be limited to six because there are not enough consultant orthodontists in the country to supervise their training.

"This training is very specialised and must be supervised by a consultant orthodontist there are only two working in the public service in Dublin and an average of one in each health board around the country."

Meanwhile, Fine Gael TD David Stanton who raised the issue in the Dáil said he was shocked to hear that 21,208 children are still waiting for orthodontic treatment six years after he first started lobbying for an improvement in this service.

Mr Martin said the health boards had informed him that 20,272 patients were receiving orthodontic treatment in the public service at the end of March 2003.

This is an increase of about 2,168 patients on the number who received treatment at the same time last year.