While dental experts acknowledged the ‘significant efforts’ of the health minister in securing a funding increase, they also stressed that ‘this cannot be the end of the road’.
Northern Ireland dental practices are to benefit from six additional Dental Foundation Training (DFT) places and a new emergency dental clinic, as health minister Mike Nesbitt confirmed the full details of an £8 million investment in general dental services.
The additional DFT places, bringing Northern Ireland’s total to 36 for 2026/27, are the most immediately relevant element for practices. The minister said the expansion aimed to support retention of newly qualified dentists in health service dentistry and address workforce shortages.
The Activity Enhancement Payment (AEP) will increase from £1.6m to £2m for 2026/27. The package also includes continuation of the 30% fee enhancement for priority treatments and the Enhanced Child Examination Scheme, which incentivises new registrations for children aged zero to 10 years.
The Western Trust emergency dental clinic, also confirmed as part of the package on Monday, was announced without details of an opening date or patient capacity figure.
Nesbitt said the funding would ‘help stabilise the service and enhance access to dentists’ while longer-term dental reform continued, but gave no timeline for that reform.
Profession warns ‘this cannot be the end of the road’
Following the initial funding announcement on 14 April, dental professionals acknowledged the ‘significant efforts’ of the minister in securing the increase, while the British Dental Association (BDA) Northern Ireland stressed that more was needed.
In March, data released by the General Dental Council (GDC) revealed that dentists in Northern Ireland were delivering a lower proportion of health service dentistry compared to colleagues in the rest of the UK, with levels of health service provision dropping fastest in the Northern Ireland region.
The BDA Northern Ireland said this was due to a ‘fundamental mismatch between fees paid by the government, and the true cost of providing modern dental care’, describing the funding gap as ‘entirely unviable’ and causing many practices to lose money through providing health service care.
Ciara Gallagher, chair of the BDA Northern Ireland Dental Practice Committee, said at the time: ‘We’re on the same page as the minister. He doesn’t pretend these measures on their own will address all the challenges facing dentistry in Northern Ireland.
‘Elements of this package are clearly hard-won but are insufficient to draw a line under the crisis we now face. Ultimately, this isn’t a “stabilisation” plan if it can’t bring struggling practices back from the brink.
‘Our executive must now go further and faster and focus on the fundamentals. Dentists need to see a future in the NHS and know they won’t lose money treating NHS patients.
‘NHS dentistry in Northern Ireland is on borrowed time. We need to see more honesty, alongside real urgency and ambition if it’s going to survive.’
The BDA called for fundamental reform of the dental payment system alongside the pledged funding.
This article was first published on 14 April 2025 and has been updated on 20 April 2025 with full details of the package announced by minister Mike Nesbitt.
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