Renewed calls for new dental school in Cork

RENEWED calls have been made for a new dental school in UCC to relieve the pressure on Cork dentistry waiting lists.

A UCC spokesperson confirmed that currently, about 50 students are accepted to study dentistry at the university annually.

14,283 children in Cork, or just 60%, received the dental appointments they were supposed to last year, the Irish Dental Association revealed.

At the end of last year, 30,000 adults and more than 5,000 children were on the outpatient waiting lists for dental treatment at CUH according to the National Treatment Purchase Fund.

Speaking in the Dáil, Deputy David Stanton asked the Minister for Further and Higher Education, if his Department is proposing the provision of a new University College Cork dental school and hospital facility.

In 2019, UCC was granted planning for a building in Curraheen, but the plan has been dropped and replaced with a plan to refurbish the old building instead of building a new one with greater capacity.

Mr Stanton said, “The current facility is old. It is too small, it is overcrowded and located on a busy campus. My information is that funding was the issue.” 

Minister Patrick O’Donovan said, “As an autonomous body, it is a matter for UCC to prioritise its capital projects, and in recent competitive funding rounds for capital funding by the State other priorities were put forward by UCC ahead of the dental school.

“My understanding is that UCC has taken a decision to invest €15 million to refurbish the existing building to address the physical infrastructure deficits in the existing dental school and hospital.” 

Mr Stanton said in response, “I am alarmed to discover that funding will be invested in the old building, which has been described as frail, constrained and ill equipped.” 

He said that a new building is what is needed, explaining “planning permission was granted for it, and it was full steam ahead — because of covid, inflation and so on, it did not go ahead, but the need remains and has increased.”

Putting €15 million into an old building is “surely a waste of money,” he said, “for the sake of further, relatively small, investment we could have a state-of-the-art dental school in the south, which is badly needed — we have a growing population, a huge need and fairly serious waiting lists.”

Fintan Hourihan, CEO of the Irish Dental Association told the Dáil earlier that month that “the decision to cancel the building of a new dental school in Cork is profoundly worrying,” given the level of pressure dentists are under.