The Dublin Dental Hospital is a fire hazard and the conditions for both patients and staff are appalling. There is an urgent need to commence the long-promised building programme of a new hospital on a site in James's Street.
The Dublin Dental Hospital was built in 1897. It was a modern and progressive building in its time which could cope adequately with the 2,500 patients at that time each year. In 1991, however, the dental hospital caters for between 70,000 and 80,000 patients. The two buildings which make up the hospital are in such a bad state of repair that they are an affront to our educational and health services.
In the past 23 to 25 years it has been accepted by all the State bodies concerned that the facilities at the dental hospital were inadequate and in need of replacement. The situation is extremely serious and the fire officer has issued a number of warnings about the unacceptable fire safety standards. The hospital administrators can no longer guarantee the safety of patients or staff who use these buildings. It is simply intolerable that the State allows this to continue. The existing buildings have long outlived their usefulness, and are now quite unsuitable. The buildings have been condemned after visits from competent UK authorities. For example, a visit by a group from the British and Irish Specialist Administration Committee for higher training in dentistry described the laboratory facilities as "barbaric", while other visitors have described the buildings as a "slum" and "hazardous".
The Dublin Dental Hospital is an integral part of the national education and health services. A high proportion of the 70,000 to 80,000 patients who use the hospital are medical card holders. They are already marginalised in our society and the dental hospital offers them their only means of receiving dental treatment. In the Eastern Health Board area alone, the existing waiting list for orthodontic treatment is approximately 9,000 and the average waiting time for treatment is around four years. This is quite unacceptable by any standards and reenforces my case for the building of a new dental hospital immediately.
I compliment the staff and administrators of the hospital on their diligent and hard work and on the level of care they provide. They have managed to develop a modern teacher-training programme to the highest European standards while being forced to work in horrid, dilapidated, Victorian slumlike conditions. We should be ashamed at the manner in which these people have been treated by various Governments down through the years.
A sum of £1.5 million has been spent already on the site and design plans for the new dental hospital at St. James's Hospital, Dubin, both the Departments of Health and Education have long ago accepted the need to build a new dental hospital. To allow for the expansion of the number of dental patients being treated each year and to continue the excellent work of developing the dental teaching-training facilities in the country, both these Departments must get on with the job of making a start on the proposed new hospital.
In the Programme for Economic and Social Progress and in the Joint Programme for Government, there are grand sentences of intent to develop the health and education services and to provide additional resources for them over a seven year period. I call on the Government to make a choice in next year's Estimates and provide the necessary initial finance to commence work on building a new dental hospital. At the end of the day it comes down to commitment and the Government wish either to build this new hospital or to continue talking about it and promising to do so at election time and at key times when programmes for Government are being negotiated. The best possible present for the Dublin Dental Hospital on its 100th anniversary would be that they would be moving into a new and adequate building before 1997. I will now quote from paragraph 43 of the Programme for Economic and Social Progress because it makes my point when it addresses the question of adequate levels of service in the public dental scheme:
The provision of adequate levels of service in the public dental scheme will require the recruitment of additional staff and the training and development of existing staff. It will also require the re-equipping of existing Health Board dental facilities and the commissioning of new facilities to provide such services.
The key sentence is, of course, "the commissioning of new facilities to provide such services".
Paragraph 44 of the programme states:
These structural issues are central to the long term development of the dental service and will be addressed over the seven-year programme.
A Cheann Comhairle, I thank you for allowing me raise this important issue. I hope the Minister will have some good news in regard to the dental services.
