Department officials had been called to brief the Health Committee on GDS following our evidence session two weeks before, on 13 June. However, on 27 June the Committee had a full agenda. As the meeting progressed throughout the afternoon, some members left, and as such, was no longer quorate.
In our letter dated 28 June expressing disappointment, we wrote: “We understand the DoH briefing could not proceed because the committee was no longer quorate. And, as we are rapidly approaching the summer recess after the institutions having only been restored since February, it concerns us that this important session won’t in all likelihood happen until the Autumn at the earliest, assuming it will be rearranged.
“We cannot overemphasise the importance and reliance representative organisations like our own, and the general public place upon our democratic institutions, in particular the Health Committee, to champion the very real issues our members and members of the public who increasingly can’t access dental care are experiencing at this time.
“Yesterday, a number of members chose not to attend a briefing that we consider was vital to the future direction of dental services here, at a time when direction is needed and when pressures at practice level are considerable. You will appreciate how incredibly disappointing this is received among the dental profession.”
Stormont’s Health Committee has an important statutory function to hold the Department to account. That includes where their approach to stabilising a service is so apparently inadequate at practice level; it involves questioning why the Department thought it could bypass consulting meaningfully and on equal terms with the profession and its representatives.
The consequences of this session not taking place are that the future of dental services in Northern Ireland remain in limbo; there is no onus on officials to engage with us to co-design the urgent and meaningful reforms needed to stabilise the service with the resources needed to get the job done.
As we stated in our evidence to the committee on 13 June, dentistry here is at crisis point. We need help from Stormont, otherwise NHS dentistry will cease to exist.