Debate contribution: Dental Care

Debate contribution by Mr Gerry Carroll on 27 May 2025.

MLA

Mr Gerry Carroll

Party at the time

People Before Profit Alliance

Date

27 May 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Dental Care

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4972187

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I declare an interest: I have a sibling who runs a dental practice in Belfast. NHS dentistry has been under threat almost since its inception, but it is now close to breaking point. People who live here are twice as likely to have filled teeth as people in England, and children here are three times as likely to have multiple teeth extracted under general anaesthetic. As has been mentioned, children in the most deprived areas, including in my constituency of West Belfast, are the least likely even to be registered with a dentist. As has been said, areas in which dentists no longer accept new patients are already being called "dental deserts". These days, most if not every community could probably be described as a "dental desert". That poses massive questions for everyone's oral health but especially that of those who live in deprived, working-class communities. The core issue in dentistry is no big mystery: when dentists treat NHS patients, they lose money. That is because the fees paid by the state are not enough to cover the costs of providing that treatment. On top of that, because the health service has been underfunded by Westminster to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds, dental practices are not financially viable. The British Dental Association recently wrote to the Health Minister to seek urgent clarity on this year's investment proposals for general dental services. Its ask, which is reasonable but urgent, is for appropriate funding to stabilise general dental services in the short term. Most dentists can no longer stay in business unless they use income from their private practice to subsidise the treatment of their NHS patients. As we have heard, in the past two years, dentists across the North have removed more than 53,000 NHS patients from their practice lists. That extremely worrying trend needs to be stopped. Out of 360 dental practices, only two are fully NHS. Some dentists continue to accept and treat NHS patients out of a sense of moral obligation, despite being financially penalised. Fair play to those people, but the state cannot shirk its responsibility to ensure that healthcare is provided. Patients who are priced out of private care find it painfully difficult, if not impossible, to access the services that they need on the NHS. People who cannot afford a private dental payment plan are forced to go without coverage, and, when they need treatment, they turn to the dental access scheme, but fewer than 10% of practices are signed up to that scheme. A lack of access to NHS dentistry has led to people extracting their own teeth, overdosing on painkillers and making their own fillings just to manage their pain. That is completely unacceptable. Serious untreated dental issues can lead to infection and even sepsis. Antibiotics and emergency surgery are often needed once a patient eventually receives emergency treatment. The indirect costs of patients not receiving the right care at the right time are astronomical. As Members have said, poor oral health has been linked to cardiovascular disease, diabetes and oral cancer. Dentistry has been starved of the funding that it needs to treat all patients regardless of their income, postcode or where they come from — where they were born. It is not good enough to shrug our shoulders and say that the money is not there. We need much more radical change to NHS dentistry to guarantee that everyone gets the treatment that they need and deserve, not just another strategy. Ultimately, there is no free market solution to the crisis. Privatisation and the free market caused this disaster, with people left literally to rot because they cannot pay for private treatment. The only way in which to guarantee dental care for all is to bring NHS dentistry into public ownership and fund it properly, with dental staff being employed directly by the NHS. The Member from the UUP mentioned there not being enough money to afford to do some of that, but I say that we cannot afford not to do it, because people's oral health is at stake.

682 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:35 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

Disagree with this assessment?

Classifications can be challenged. A person reads every challenge, and any change is recorded publicly above with its reason.

Challenge this classification