To ask the Minister of Health to detail the steps he is taking to ensure adequate provision of dental care in East Londonderry.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had significant impact on capacity within GDS, with dentists currently delivering less than their pre-pandemic activity. To ensure that this more limited capacity is targeted appropriately, dentists are asked to prioritise patients requiring emergency or urgent care. This may mean that in some cases, patients will have to wait longer for routine examinations and treatment.

Recent easing of Infection Prevention and Control procedures within all health care settings, along with the introduction of the Rebuilding Support Scheme (RSS) in April 2022 is anticipated to increase capacity within practices resulting in improved access. The HSCB are also currently scoping other avenues to increase the availability of appointments for non-registered patients. In the meantime, the Urgent Dental Care Centres continue to provide cover for patients with dental emergencies who cannot be seen in practice. Patient registration timeframes have also been extended since the beginning of the pandemic to ensure that patients registration status is unaffected by any difficulties encountered in attending.

A £5m Revenue Grant Scheme was launched on 27 January 2022 for dental practices to support the cost of improving and increasing their delivery of General Dental Services. This funding is designed to improve patient safety, practice efficiency and improve the resilience of practices in order to mitigate against future transmission of aerosol based respiratory diseases, and other infectious diseases.