NI budget: Dentists warn that services face collapse if hit by cuts

Dental services in Northern Ireland face collapse if health service cuts hit the sector, civil servants and politicians have been warned.

Following April's budget, the Department of Health said it had been left £470m short of its estimated needs for this financial year.

The British Dental Association (BDA) said cuts would devastate a service already on the brink.

The department said financial pressures were considerable and unprecedented.

It added it had given "significant financial support" to dental services.

The budget was set at Westminster due to the ongoing Stormont stalemate.

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) is boycotting the devolved assembly and executive until it is satisfied that its concerns over post-Brexit trade arrangements for Northern Ireland have been addressed.

Departments are being run by civil servants, who have to take decisions over how to spend their chunk of the overall budget.

In an open letter to Peter May, permanent secretary at the Department of Health, representatives from across dentistry in Northern Ireland stressed that cuts could lead to the collapse of services.

They said a failure to provide "needed investment" could have the same effect.

"The price will be paid by patients across Northern Ireland," the letter warned.

Dental leaders say Northern Ireland faces "a three-tier system", where people who cannot register under the NHS but cannot afford to pay privately are left without routine access to services other than emergency care.

They said red flag referrals for suspected oral cancers should have a waiting time of two weeks but are instead at eight-and-a-half weeks in some areas.

They also highlighted a BBC News NI investigation in 2022 that found 90% of practices were not accepting new adult patients and 88% were not accepting child patients.

The letter said there had been a huge affect on the morale of dentists - with 63.6% saying their morale was low or very low.

Michael O'Neill, head of general dental and ophthalmic services at the Department of Health, wrote to dentists on 3 May to say that work was ongoing to secure savings and raise revenue across health budgets.

The BDA said Stormont politicians should "step up, and protect the future of NHS dentistry across Northern Ireland".

The vice-chair of the BDA, Peter Crooks, said that every sector in dentistry is in crisis mode and at breaking point.

"[Practices] do need to make a profit but the fees for providing treatment are not profitable at all," he told BBC's Good Morning Ulster programme.

"If a dentist continues on the health service, our risk is that those practices will close unless they do something about it."

He said cuts mean private care could be the only way people can be treated, which would lead to "oral-health inequalities".

"Many people will not be able to access care; it will be too expensive," he added.

Mr Crooks said the future is not looking good for patients.

"We see a dangerous situation coming down the line where patients in Northern Ireland will not be treated appropriately and properly, and they should be."

A spokesperson for the Department of Health said the Covid-19 pandemic had a significant and enduring impact on dental services.

They said the situation had improved since and that to help practices throughout the pandemic the department had provided " significant and unprecedented financial support", with approximately £95.5m to help increase levels of health-service activity.

They added that continuing support was available and a pilot scheme had been launched to help non-registered patients with an emergency or urgent dental condition.