To ask the Minister of Health to detail any assessment that has been made of the impact of reduced access to routine and preventative dental care on demand for emergency dental, GP, and hospital services.

At present, all registered patients can access emergency dental treatment at their registered practice, where their General Dental Practitioner has an obligation to provide the required treatment to in a timely manner.

The Dental Access Scheme (DAS) has been in operation since 1 August 2024. The DAS provides appointments to unregistered patients who require treatment to deal with urgent or pressing dental problems during the working week. My Department provided funding for up to 500 patients to be seen under the DAS per week. The performance data shows that there has been a high demand for this service with approximately 800 patients now accessing the service per week.

For any patient experiencing an urgent or emergency dental condition at weekends or public holidays, dental care can be obtained at one of the three Emergency Dental Clinics (EDCs) based in Belfast, Armagh and Ballymena. Patients are triaged remotely and appropriate advice given or treatment arranged. Again, there is a high demand for this service. The treatment appointments are currently limited to 55 patients per day but my Department has made funding available to the Southern HSC Trust to expand their EDC service which will increase the number of emergency appointments to 66 per day. My Officials are also working on a proposal to commission an Emergency Dental Clinic for the Western area to meet the demand for patients requiring out-of-hours emergency dental care, subject to the necessary funding being identified.

In addition, undergraduate dental students, based in the urgent student clinic (USC) in the Belfast Dental School provide emergency dental appointments for unregistered patients under the supervision of dental teaching staff. Patients can self-refer to this service, which is available during the university term time, i.e. 39 weeks per year. This service is heavily over-subscribed with 48 patients applying for the 16 appointments available per day. My Department has recently provided additional funding to the Belfast Trust to increase the number of appointments available to 20 per day and extend the opening of the USC by 10 weeks beyond term time.

My Department does not hold data for demand relating to emergency dental care provided by GPs or within hospital settings.