As former members of the Dental Council we were very upset to learn from the RTÉ Prime Time programme (September 7) that the Dental Council is not itself in a position to act effectively against the alleged illegal practice of dentistry and other allegations regarding an alleged sex-offender practicing in Ireland and matters involving faceless companies delivering dental services.
It appears that the public may now find itself unprotected because of perceived limitations in the 1985 Dentists Act, the legislation underpinning the role of Dental Council in the protection of the public and the regulation of dental practice and the dental profession in Ireland.
It is clear from the programme that the majority of blame for this lies in delays at Department of Health level in formulating new legislation to replace the outdated and inadequate 1985 Act.
We, through our experiences as members of Dental Council, can bear witness to continual foot-dragging and prevarication by the Dept of Health in bringing forward this legislation for more than 18 years.
In our time on the Dental Council we were involved in such initiatives as a workshop on possible new legislation (February 2010); meeting the minister and his officials (Nov 2010); making a submission to the Dept of Health on possible new legislation (Nov 2011); contributing to an extensive (and expensive) Department of Health consultative process on planned new dental legislation in 2013; meeting with Departmental drafting personnel (June 2015), and making an extensive submission on the matter to a hearing of the Joint Committee on Health and Children (October 2015).
We are also aware that, since our time on the Dental Council, another significant submission on the matter was sent to the Department. In all, since 2005, the Dental Council have made five submissions to the department about new legislation. In spite of all of this activity, nothing has happened and no new legislation has been introduced.
Now the matter is the subject of a television investigation. Is this what’s needed to get any action from a department which, when it comes to matters pertaining to oral health is, in our view, uninterested, unprofessional, lacking in patient-focus, obstructive, and paralysed by a need for self-protection and which has, in essence, sat on its hands throughout the terms of various ministers for health, including the current taoiseach?
In addition, we have a public dental service which is now third-rate in structure and delivery. We are steadily regressing when it comes to oral health services. There are no national, cohesive models for publicly-funded primary-care or secondary-care services to the citizens of this country.
One’s ability to pay for treatment or geographic location have become almost the only criteria for access.
This farce is currently being overseen by a minister who, when he was Opposition spokesman for health, was critical of the current national oral health strategy and supported calls for it to be rewritten. Now he champions the same policy which took five years to draw up and has not yet been implemented and which has very little support from within the dental profession which was largely ignored when the policy was being written.
He also voted against a recent bill making continuing professional dental education mandatory for all registrants. You couldn’t make this up.
Now we are at the inevitable stage where patients are possibly being harmed. Will it take a catastrophic adverse event to get some action from within a dysfunctional Department of Health on long overdue new legislation which would give patients the protection they now incorrectly assume is there? It is long past time for action. For goodness sake, get on with it.
Martin Holohan president,Dental Council, 2005-2010
Barney Murphy vice- president,Dental Council, 2005-2015
Terry Farrelly chair, Fitness to Practice, 2005-2015
Wolfe Tones are polarising opinions
It was interesting to read two opinion pieces in the Irish Examiner (September 9) on the recent popularity of the Wolfe Tones. One, from Mick Clifford — ‘Young Tones fans are supremely untroubled by the Troubles’ — perplexed at what he sees as shortsightedness of youth.
The other, from Séamas O’Reilly — ‘Wolfe Tone discourse no symphony to my ears’ — perplexed at the shortsightedness of commentators like Mr Clifford.
It was good to read the two opinions (plus Gareth O’Callaghan’s involved article on Sinn Féin — ‘Sinn Féin’s history no longer seems to matter to today’s voters’). Ultimately, the dial turns towards Séamas O’Reilly, who is actually from the North. Mick Clifford himself mentioned the importance of lived experience.
Some people like Mick Clifford might shake their heads, thinking young people aren’t educated enough on the Troubles. What I think is that young people have actually educated themselves more than their forefathers on the terror of colonialism. They then see armed conflict in Northern Ireland, and conclude the morality, nor the reporting on it, cannot be just be black and white.
Thank you for sharing both opinions. Newspaper readers will be very familiar with Mick Clifford’s type of view, but for a long time voices like Séamas O’Reilly weren’t being heard.
Fachtna O’Raftery
Clonakilty
Co. Cork
Cluster munitions
The Convention on cluster munitions adopted in Dublin in 2008, included an undertaking never, “in any circumstance” to “transfer to anyone, directly or indirectly” cluster munitions.
Since the US announced it was sending cluster bombs and depleted uranium munitions to Ukraine, several aircraft on contract to the US military have been refuelled at Shannon Airport on their way to locations in Poland, including Rzeszów Jasionka airport located just 50 miles from the Ukraine border and to Poznan airport in Poland where the US now has a large logistic base used to support the Ukrainian military forces.
An independent report by Humanity and Inclusion found that almost 700 people had been killed or injured by cluster munitions in Ukraine in 2022. No US plane in Shannon has ever been checked to ascertain if it contains these or any weapons.
As the host country for the adoption of the convention on cluster munitions, surely the time has long passed for Ireland to check these planes for the presence of such weapons.
Elizabeth Cullen
Kilcullen
Co. Kilkenny
Overstating Bertie
Reports of Bertie Ahern’s role in the Good Friday Agreement are completely overstated; he was only taoiseach for nine months before it was signed.
Gerry Adams, Albert Reynolds, John Major, Martin McGuinness, George Mitchell, John Hume, David Irvine, and Mo Mowlam were the key players in reaching the agreement.
The contribution of these people is being sidelined to rehabilitate a man who allegedly didn’t even have a bank account and never explained where his money came from.
Noel Harrington
Kinsale
Co. Cork
