To ask the Minister of Health to detail any steps his Department is taking to ensure the General Dental Contract is reformed and fully implemented by the end of the 2022-2027 mandate to prevent the movement of practitioners towards private care.

My Department’s Health and Social Care NI three-year plan included a commitment to develop an action plan and programme of work for the reform of General Dental Services by April 2027.

The first step on this path is to determine the real cost of providing dental services so that realistic options for reform of the service can be developed.

To achieve that I have approved the commissioning of a cost-of-service review to be completed in 2025/26. The outworking of the review will inform the next steps, and it would be counterproductive to pre-empt the conclusion of the review by predetermining those next steps.