Urgent action needed to ensure that citizens in Northern Ireland have access to dental care

It’s well past time for the department of health and the health minister to take urgent action to ensure that citizens in Northern Ireland have access to dental care. The fact that more than 53,000 patients have been removed from their practice lists over the past two years is a scandal. During 2023 and 2024, 114 dentists in Northern Ireland handed back their NHS contracts to the Department of Health (DoH), with many of these now doing private work only. Out of the 360 dental practices in Northern Ireland, only two are now fully NHS.

England experienced this degeneration in public services before Northern Ireland experienced it. In 2022 the British Dental Association (BDA) estimated that “NHS dentistry would require an additional £880 million per year simply to restore resources to 2010 levels.” According to Shawn Charlwood, then Chair of the General Dental Practice Committee, “no other area of healthcare has had its budget slashed as much as dentistry over the last decade.” During the same period, NHS dentists saw their take-home pay falling by 40 percent in real terms. 

Against this backdrop, corporate dental insurance businesses are circling like vultures and selling themselves to middle class people as “as a timely and valuable employee benefit, helping bridge the widening gap in oral healthcare access”.

The British Dental Association in NI has called for immediate short-term "bridging" support for dental practices as a lifeline to cover costs, and in late May, health minister Mike Nesbitt outlined a £7m investment in general dental services for 2025-26. Given that Stormont recently spent £550,000 in a 22-month period on catering services alone, £7 million is not a huge amount of money and it is hardly likely to stem the decline in dental services and, ultimately, oral health.