Barrtalk: Are we sleepwalking into a dental crisis in Inishowen?

There was a time when the mere mention of the dentist was enough to send a shiver down the spine. We feared the drill. We feared the scraping implements. We feared being told we had to floss more.

These days, however, the biggest fear for many people in Inishowen is not what the dentist might do to your teeth. It is whether you can get to see one at all.

I have been inundated with horror stories from people across Inishowen who simply cannot get registered with a local dentist for love nor money. And this isn't some new problem that has suddenly appeared. It has been building for years – and, from everything I'm hearing, it is getting worse.

Never mind human teeth, dentists in Inishowen are becoming as rare as hen's teeth.

Are we sleepwalking towards a dental crisis? Or, perhaps more worryingly, are we already in one?

In my view, access to a dentist should be regarded in much the same way as access to a GP. Dental health is healthcare. Teeth are part of the human body. Looking after them should not be treated as some optional luxury available only to those lucky enough to get onto a practice list – or those with deep enough pockets.

Why shouldn't we have one or two dentists operating from every GP centre? The answer is: we absolutely should.

Instead, we have allowed an ad-hoc, laissez-faire system to develop where the availability of a dentist depends largely on whether a dentist decides to open a practice in your town or not.

If they do, happy days. If they don't, you're scuppered.

That might sound flippant, but there is nothing remotely funny about the situation facing families who cannot find a dentist for their children, or adults who suddenly develop a serious dental problem and have nowhere locally to turn.

Imagine the uproar if people in Inishowen couldn't get access to a GP. Yet when it comes to dentists, we seem to have accepted it as normal.

There isn't an A&E department for dental emergencies. There isn't a NowDoc for your toothache at 2am.

And parents are understandably worried about what happens if a child who isn't registered with a dentist suddenly develops a serious dental problem.

The situation with school dental checks doesn't exactly inspire confidence either. Visiting school dentists, once a familiar feature of local life, seem increasingly to be a thing of the past. I'm hearing that some children are waiting so long for their required checks that sixth-class pupils can be well into secondary school before they are examined.

That's not preventative healthcare. That's playing catch-up.

And then there is the increasingly blurred line between dental healthcare and cosmetic dentistry.

Dentists are entitled to make a living – of course they are. But dentistry increasingly appears to be heavily monetised, with the emphasis sometimes seeming to shift towards cosmetic procedures and treatments costing thousands of euro.

Teeth health should not become another measure of personal wealth.

In my own town of Moville, the situation has become so difficult that people are looking as far afield as Letterkenny for a dentist, if they are lucky enough to find one willing to take them on.

That’s an 80-mile, two-hour round trip for something as fundamental as looking after your teeth.

We need to stop treating dental care as a luxury and start treating it as a basic public health necessity.

The HSE should provide at least one dentist in every town with a population of 1,000 or more, ideally integrated alongside existing GP services.

Because when you have to travel 80 miles to find someone to look after your teeth, something has gone seriously wrong.

And if we don't address it now, we may soon discover that the real crisis isn't coming. It's already here.

Music in the Derry Air [but we need more big concerts]

Thousands of concertgoers, including half of Inishowen, packed Derry's Ebrington Square last week for a gig by hugely popular Irish band Kingfishr.

Everything aligned for organisers who managed to get the weather to behave outstandingly at 20-plus degrees after weeks of grey skies and rain.

There's no doubt the heavily invested Ebrington Square provides a cracking venue. Views of the Peace Bridge and Guildhall are hard to beat, and an increasing number of trendy bars and restaurants, as well as a hotel, have given the whole area a village feel.

It begs the question as to why there aren't many more live concerts there.

There was the well-documented controversy in 2023 when the owners of the nearby hotel threatened legal action against the Northern Ireland Executive over a lack of consultation about live music.

Payouts were made and agreements were reached and since then there have obviously been numerous live gigs there.

Last year, English singer Emilie Sandé sang there, as well as 80s stars UB40.

But if last Monday's crowd at the Kingfishr concert is anything to go by, there's an appetite for a lot more.

Is it time to up the ante with big live music events in Derry and the wider North West?

Is there a private investor that could give the city somewhere that could hold up to 20,000 people at gigs the whole year round?

Surely it’s a runner, with the amount of visitors now streaming into Derry, not to mention the huge catchment area of people who would happily avoid the drive to concerts in Belfast or Dublin.

It definitely seems like a trick is being missed somewhere given the clamber for tickets for Monday's Kingfishr concert, which sold out in hours.

In fact, you’d more hope of getting a dentist than a ticket in Inishowen last week – and that’s saying something!