asked the Minister for Social Welfare if it is intended to extend free dental care on the basis of their husbands' social welfare contributions to married women who are not in paid employment; and, if so, when it will be implemented.

The annual cost of extending dental benefit in the manner suggested would be of the order of £4.6 million in a year. Having regard to the current critical state of the public finances I regret that I do not have any resources to meet such an extension. It is, however, a proposal which I will keep in mind for consideration when financial circumstances improve.

Given the almost constant reiteration of the important part played by mothers staying at home and not being in paid employment, will the Minister not accept that it is a disgrace that they should be discriminated against in this way and that some effort should be made in the coming budget to change the system whereby they are deprived of this type of treatment?

I very much regret that in the context of the 1984 Estimates I could not contemplate giving further benefit to 300,000 persons. The Deputy is a confirmed advocate of not increasing PRSI rates. In order to extend this benefit one would have to increase substantially the rates of pay related social insurance, and the Deputy's party are adept at explaining why people should not have to pay PRSI. We cannot have it both ways. The cost of extending the scheme to cover an extra 300,000 persons would be a further £4.6 million. Under the dental benefit scheme operated by the health boards, dental benefit is available to holders of medical cards and their wives and dependants. Forty per cent of the population are covered by medical cards and they qualify for dental benefit, including their wives and dependants. The scheme has been substantially improved and new dental appointments have been made. Much as I would wish to extend the scheme, the additional money is not available.

Would the Minister accept that there is grave discrimination in the exclusion of such a number of married women at home from this service?

I would be all in favour of it if the party opposite had not spent £79 million in the past week in terms of the questions they put down on health. So far they have proposed expenditure of about £6 million. My Department will require next year additional tens of millions of pounds to pay for unemployment benefit and assistance.

For which the Government are responsible.

I do not have additional resources to extend the scheme in that direction.

I did not get an answer to my question. I asked whether the Minister would agree that there is open discrimination against women through their exclusion from participation in the scheme.

That is not a question seeking information.

I am asking whether the Minister would agree with me. Will the Minister state when the pious reiteration of objectives will give way to the implementation of this measure?

On what does the Minister base the figure of £4.6 million? How often would each of the 300,000 persons have to receive treatment in order to arrive at that figure?

Any insured persons, and that includes women who are insured, provided they satisfy certain statutory contribution conditions on their own insurance, qualify under the scheme. There are 620 dentists operating the scheme throughout the country and the insured person does not pay any portion of the cost in the case of fillings, extractions and scaling. In the case of all other treatments the insured person pays a proportion of the cost. The figure of £4.6 million has been very carefully costed. We monitor the scheme very carefully and we know the average price per treatment. The addition of 300,000 persons would cost £4.6 million.

Spoken like a true Socialist.

We tell the truth. We do not indulge in gombeen politics.

The Minister and his party have as little care for the less well off as their Fine Gael colleagues.

We tell the truth, nothing less.

The Deputy would not know about that.

7.