To ask the Minister of Health what plans he has for developing a new oral health strategy.

The current Northern Ireland Oral Health Strategy (OHS) was published in 2007 and, despite its age, the main oral health problems described in the document and the approaches to prevention advocated by it remain valid today.

The challenges facing the HSC and DoH today mean that, unfortunately, the significant resources required to develop a new wide-ranging OHS are not available at this time. However, the importance of analysing the oral health status of the population and recommending evidence-based approaches to health improvement is recognised. Therefore, as soon as there is sufficient capacity available, my officials will complete the work which began in late 2019 of establishing two oral health options groups. One group will be dedicated to improving the oral health of children while the other will specifically look at how elderly oral health may be improved.

I have provided approximately £0.97 million in level 1 PPE which was delivered in July to Northern Ireland dental practices and £3.8 million of funding was added to the GDS budget to cover additional PPE costs incurred by practitioners in the August to November period. These levels of funding will continue for the rest of the year and the position remains under review.

The introduction of the new Northern Ireland dental operational guidance in October has significantly reduced the fallow time for the average Northern Ireland practice. This has meant that the ventilation issue is less crucial in determining dentists' activity. Furthermore, practice ventilation system technology is evolving and significant investment at this stage would for most practices be premature.

The general UK IPC guidance and the specific dental annex draw heavily upon the work of leading UK dental academics in the fields of virology, aero biology, health protection and ventilation engineering. The highest level of expertise in these fields is only accessible through the various UK IPC networks into which Northern Ireland is connected. There is some scope for Northern Ireland to operationalise the UK IPC guidance differently but, given the gaps in our knowledge in relation to SARS-CoV-2, there are inherent risks in any significant deviation from the official UK IPC guidance.

The new Northern Ireland guidance allows fallow periods which are approximately 50% less than those required under the previous guidance. It also specifies minimum fallow periods dependent upon clinical circumstances. It is the Department's current position that going below these minimum times would lead to an unacceptable increase in the risk of Coronavirus transmission.