Monaghan Town Councillor Tommy Hagan has described the HSE dental services for children in the local area as “a shambles” and said it is designed to make children suffer and parents pay.

Speaking this week Councillor Hagan said he had been approached by a number of parents in the past few weeks regarding the dental service in the region. “It seems it is a shambles with regard to primary school children who although they are entitled to a free service, they are being put on a ever-increasing waiting list with the result that some parents are taking their children to Northern Ireland for treatment rather than watch them suffer.”

The Fine Gael councillor fumed, “We are supposed to be a caring society, especially for our children yet Harney, Drumm and the rest of the HSE management have got it wrong once again. One local parent of a child told me this week that she had waited for her child to be treated for nearly two years and because the problem was reoccurring she applied to a dentist in the north and had the problem solved within days at a far cheaper rate than she had been quoted for private treatment here.”

Cllr Hagan put the question to what he described as “overpaid management teams” and asked them – “If you cannot even manage a dental system for our children what are you managing?” Concluding, he said, “The HSE is in a shambles. Harney continues to waffle and cut back on services while employing expensive executives with strings of letters after their name and no common sense and meanwhile our children suffer with dental problems.”