THE DEPARTMENT of Social and Family Affairs received 150,000 applications from dentists for the approval of treatments, just days before dental cuts came into effect after the Budget, the Dáil has heard.

Minister for Social and Family affairs Mary Hanafin said the vast bulk of those applications came from just eight dental practices, between the date of the Budget and December 31st, when the changes were introduced.

“It’s striking that the dentists were very busy in the 10 working days between the Budget and the end of the year,” she said.

The Minister told Fine Gael spokeswoman Olwyn Enright and Labour’s Róisín Shortall that the department could strike a dentist from its dental treatment panel if “they were deliberately trying to defraud the system”.

She added that “spotchecks were done to find that some of the customers who were anticipating getting treatment in the future were actually dead”.

All “the forms in some cases were signed with the same signature, which may have been erroneously done by a receptionist”. A number of customers were contacted and many “had not approached the dentist to seek treatment nor had they authorised the dental practice to submit an application on their behalf”.