There’s currently a 60 month wait in Waterford with ‘priority’ cases waiting on average a year and a half.

Sinn Fein’s David Cullinane challenged the Taoiseach on this.

The Taoiseach Leo Varadkar encouraged Deputies to read their new policy in the area.

David Cullinane told the Dail:

A Programme for a Partnership Government makes many promises and some of those have simply not been fulfilled. One of those promises is to reduce waiting times for a range of healthcare treatments in specialties right across the board and across regions. The Taoiseach stated earlier that everybody is benefiting from the recovery, or at least that everybody should benefit from the recovery, but there are certain cohorts who depend on public health services who are not benefiting from any recovery. One of these consists of people waiting for orthodontic treatment.

I will give the Taoiseach the breakdown of public waiting times for orthodontic treatment in the south east as of today. It is 59 months in Carlow-Kilkenny and Wexford and 60 months in south Tipperary and Waterford, meaning the average waiting time is five years to have orthodontic treatment carried out. Within those classifications of waiting times, the Health Service Executive has had to prioritise crisis cases. The waiting times in that respect are 20 months in Carlow-Kilkenny and south Tipperary, 18 months in Waterford and 16 months in Wexford. How can that be the case? The capacity is not there and we do not have enough orthodontists.

This is a programme for Government commitment that has not been met as waiting times have increased. They have doubled in the past five years rather than going down. Will the Taoiseach outline to the House the extra capacity and resources that will be provided for orthodontic care and treatment to ensure people do not have to wait five years in some parts of this country for orthodontic treatment?

Replying Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said –

On orthodontics, it is fair to say that we all agree that the current system is not satisfactory. The new oral health policy points out a pathway by which we can adopt a different approach to oral health. That is entitled Smile Agus Sláinte, and I would encourage Deputies to familiarise themselves with that.

When the programme for Government mentions building fair and inclusive prosperity, there are a number of things which the authors, including me, had in mind. The first was that we would get to a point where there would be employment for anybody who wants it, and we are quite close to that point now, with unemployment down to 4.4%. We are approaching full employment, which is a massive turnaround from eight or nine years ago and a significant improvement from three years ago. It was also very much about regional development. Three years ago one of the major criticisms of the recovery was that it was not reaching all parts of the country. While we can never have economic growth absolutely even in every part of the country, it is fair to say that in the past three years we have seen economic growth and increased prosperity spread throughout the country in a more balanced way than it was in the past.

It is not possible to do everything we would like to do in any one year but I believe those past three years have seen some real progress.