Limerick East): The provision of dental treatment under the dental treatment services scheme to persons with medical card entitlement is the statutory responsibility of the health boards.
The second phase of the dental treatment services scheme was introduced by the North-Eastern Health Board on 1 June 1996. This extended the scheme to provide routine dental treatment services to medical card holders in the 16 to 34 year old age group and the provision of full dentures to all medical card holders without any natural teeth.
I understand from the North-Eastern Health Board that since the introduction of the scheme there has been a substantial improvement over the treatment which existed in the region a number of years ago. Under the emergency category of the dental treatment services scheme, 12,732 treatments have been provided to the end of October 1996. The board also provided 3,562 treatments under the routine element of the scheme and dentures have been provided for 1,673 persons in the first ten months of this year.
Due to difficulties being experienced in the operation of the scheme I understand that the numbers of persons approved for routine treatment under the second phase of the scheme has been limited. This has arisen because the emergency element of the scheme is using a disproportionate amount of the board's budget for the scheme as a whole. This has limited the amount of routine treatment which the board has been able to approve.
The board is making strenuous efforts to bring the emergency element under control with the assistance of revised arrangements for emergency treatment. These are designed to ensure that the emergency element of the scheme is used only for the relief of pain in accordance with the original design of the scheme.
