More than 1,000 children in Waterford have now been waiting 20 months for routine dental screening.
The HSE is required to provide children with a dental examination in 2nd and 6th classes in primary school.
According to figures released to TD Michael Healy-Rae by the HSE, the dental screening that was supposed to take place for Waterford children who started sixth class in September 2020, has still not begun.
The Waterford/Wexford area is the only one in the country where this is the case - it has started in all the other Community Healthcare Organisations (or CHOs).
The exact number of students waiting for this appointment wasn't included in the reply to Deputy Healy-Rae's parliamentary question.
However, figures released to another TD, Mark Ward, at the end of last year showed there were 1,871 students in Waterford from that 6th class year group who were on the waiting list at that time.
There were also 2,064 2nd class students of the 2020/2021 group who had yet to be seen.
The Health Service said at that point that it was "as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and the recent HSE cyber-attack" that the waiting times for primary school children had been so adversely impacted, resulting in a considerable backlog of work.
