I thank the Minister of State and I am sorry that we are dealing with this so late in the evening. What action is the Department of higher education taking to increase the number of dental training places in our universities? This is in view of the fact that no increase has occurred in the past 25 years while the population of the country has increased by 1.6 million people.

Moreover, will the Minister of State explain why 44% of training places in our universities are made available to non-EU students?

I will give the figures for final year students in Trinity College Dublin: 46 students, of whom 25 are Irish or EU students and 21 are non-EU students. In University College Cork, there are 61 students of whom 25 are EU students, which includes Irish students, and 36 are non-EU students. They are the figures for final year in our colleges. We have a huge increase in population and we have not responded.

To give an idea about treatment, in 2012, 394,399 availed of it under the public health service. In 2023, the figure was 283,000. That is down more than 100,000. In 2012, there were 1,432 dentists offering to provide dental care under the public scheme. In 2024, it was down to 810, yet our population had increased dramatically. There is also an additional issue in that we now have an older population. Going back 30 or 40 years, most older people tended to have dentures. That has now totally changed so there are now more older people who require dental treatment as well. The Department of Health has acknowledged that there are 2,420 dentists in the country. That is 47 dentists per 100,000 people or one dentist per 2,125 people.

We need to forward plan. Even if, in the morning, we decided to increase the number of places, it would still take five years before the students would be out there. There is an easy way to deal with this and the Irish Dental Association has already set it out quite clearly. The places are there but we are giving them to non-EU students. We need to decrease the number of non-EU students and increase the number of Irish and other EU students. We do not have to put extra money into it, except to replace the money the colleges are getting from non-EU students with money from the Department so we can improve and increase the number of training places available. It is not that we have to build new structures or provide more equipment. We do not. It is already there. The Irish Dental Association has suggested that we decrease the number of non-EU students to 20%. It did not say to cut them out completely but to reduce the number. We have to give more funding. I do not care what answer the Department gives tonight. This has been put on the back burner for far too long. We were to build a new dental school in Cork, we had identified a site, we got the planning permission, funding was not available and the whole project was abandoned. Now we are in a scenario where we have population growth, people are living longer and we do not have the dentists to look after them. Now is the time to take action and we need to take it before 1 September.

I thank the Deputy for raising this important matter regarding the availability of dental training places, which I will take on behalf of the Minister.

This Government is firmly committed to ensuring our healthcare system is supported by a steady and sustainable pipeline of highly skilled graduates. The Department, in collaboration with the Department of Health, the Higher Education Authority, HEA, and higher education institutions, HEIs, plays a central role in delivering the education and training infrastructure needed to meet the evolving demands of the healthcare workforce, including in critical areas such as oral healthcare and dentistry. Ensuring adequate capacity to train future dentists is part of our broader commitment to workforce planning that supports the health and well-being of our population.

Until this year, approximately 60 places were available each year to Irish and EU students on dentistry courses. The Department recognises that this represents a limited training pipeline at a time when the demand for oral healthcare, both clinical and preventative, is increasing nationally. The number of places offered is a matter for the higher education institutions, in line with their autonomy. However, I acknowledge that due to a high level of practical work, there can be material constraints on the number of students who can be accepted onto dentistry courses. While the Department does not set quotas for student places, we work closely with the Department of Health and the HEA to explore how capacity can be sustainably expanded in key health disciplines, including dentistry.

In 2023, the HEA carried out a targeted capacity expansion exercise across priority healthcare areas. One key outcome was the establishment of new dentistry programmes, including a new bachelor of dental surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, RCSI, commencing in 2025. This new programme will follow a community-based model of dental education and will provide at least 20 new dentistry places per annum for Irish and EEA students, significantly enhancing national training capacity. This expansion represents a landmark 33% increase in student intake and clearly demonstrates the Department’s and this Government’s firm commitment to strengthening the oral healthcare workforce and supplying the graduates needed for a modern, accessible health system. I reaffirm the Department’s commitment to working with all relevant stakeholders to ensure any future expansion of dental education is grounded in evidence, responds to national needs and is delivered in a sustainable manner.

It is my understanding that the Department of Health is conducting a scoping exercise to support a skills assessment workforce census across the oral healthcare sector. This will form the foundation for future policy and programme development. The Department stands ready to work with HEIs and the Department of Health to ensure any changes to professional scope are matched with appropriate and high-quality educational provision. I have been informed that the Department of Health is also examining the feasibility of a new mid-level oral health professional grade. The outcomes of this work, which is due to be published shortly, may have further implications for the number and types of training places needed in the coming years across oral healthcare.

I thank the Minister of State for the reply. I would like clarity on the RCSI. Will those students be fee-paying students or will they come under the education system and be the same as any other students? I always thought that RCSI was full of fee-paying students.

Second, an extra 20 places is not sufficient and the figures show that. The number of dentists now offering public services has decreased from slightly more than 1,400 down to 810. We have lost 600 and we will lose another 200 to 300 in the coming months with the way things are going. The other issue is that there are now fewer dentists working with the HSE compared with four years ago. There are 30 fewer dentists working with the HSE. This is not a situation that will be resolved by 20 new places. There is an easy way to deal with this, and I have set it out already: reduce the number of training places for non-EU students in our colleges and increase the number of Irish students. It is easy to do. No extra funding is needed except additional money to be provided to the colleges to provide those training places. If the number in UCC is reduced from 38 to 18, for example, the money for the 18 then being taken in as Irish students needs to be made up. It has to be looked at.

I love these expressions that a scoping exercise will be done or something is being examined. The figures are there. There is no need for any examination. We are short of dentists.

I met a young person recently who has a disability and needed extractions. The earliest he can get an appointment in the public service is in 12 months' time. The family ended up having to pay €10,000 because, to get the extractions done, he has to have an anaesthetic and a consultant anaesthetist has to be in place. It will cost €10,000 because he could not get access to the public service. That cannot go on and, even if we start in the morning, it will be five years before the people are available.

I appreciate the answer. What surprises me is the figure given of 17% of passports when, just in the past couple of weeks, I have had at least four or five people come to me. I have listened to a couple of other Deputies raising this issue as well, one from the Minister of State's own party during, I think, Questions on Policy or Legislation. It most definitely is an issue, but not with the Passport Office, because it does its due diligence and I understand that. Whenever people call the office about a passport, I hope it is not a first passport. I always know that if it is, it will be very difficult to try to resolve. Unfortunately, people sometimes do not understand until it is explained to them the importance of ensuring the veracity of the applicant and making sure this is real. Once a person gets their first passport, it then naturally follows on, so they have to get that piece right. I entirely agree that all of the checks and balances need to happen so that we ensure, as the Minister of State has said, that the Irish passport remains the number one.

The Minister of State talking about the Irish passport being number one reminds me of something. About ten or 12 years ago, agents of Mossad, the Israeli security service were caught with Irish passports. This relates to the previous debate we had in relation to that country. There is something we have to look at and we have to ensure that the system works. It is a stressful time for people and we have to try to make it as easy as we possibly can for them, the Passport Office and the Garda. We have to make sure there is not a waste of time or energy. We have to try to get it digitised in some way so that the checks can be done much more quickly and more easily and we do not have the situation where, unfortunately, people like this are left struggling, ringing our offices trying to get it sorted.

I will reply on two issues. Where an Irish passport is tampered with, it tends not to be a forged or made-up document. It tends to be a stolen passport which someone uses to try to assume the identity of the owner and by trying to say they look like the person in the photo. That is how good the Irish passport is. The Deputy referred to an incident from ten or 12 years ago. I can assure him that things are greatly different now. Hence, the number one status, which has been achieved by 500 amazing staff in Balbriggan who I was very lucky to visit with Deputy Grace Boland a couple of weeks ago.

As a personal observation as much as anything else, and the Deputy and I have been in this House for the same amount of time so I do not pretend to be an oracle on this, if a person is contacting their TD about any issue, it is generally the last-chance saloon. People get pretty desperate and sometimes there have been failings in the systems and sometimes the person is that anomaly. As I mentioned, only 17% of applications require Garda witnessing. So far, 440,000 applications have been processed, so 17% of 440,000 equates to 23,000, last week alone. There will always be a few where the Garda station cannot be contacted three times or the superintendent cannot be contacted and then, eventually, it has to go back. If that is to happen to a person who is one of those who does everything the Deputy and I would say to them not to do, such as book travel, particularly for a child, without a valid passport, the first place the person will turn to, if not the parish priest, is probably their local TD, in search of divine or political intervention. That is not to take away from the stress and the fact this does not absolve us from our responsibility to constantly improve the customer-facing role of the Passport Office. It is exceptional and possibly the best service in the State. Post Covid, we had a lot of debates about that and we do not have them anymore. I repeat that we will welcome any opportunity for An Garda Síochána to digitise its records. We maintain a good relationship with An Garda Síochána, and where we can work more closely together and where the Deputy can feed in this level of constructive criticism, I see no reason not to take it on board.