To ask the Minister of Health what consideration he is giving to developing an oral health strategy, in line with the recommendation from the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee at Westminster.

The development of a new Oral Health Strategy would carry a significant resource cost and, in the context of the range of financial pressures facing Health and Social Care, it has not been possible in past years to identify funding for that. A dedicated Dental Public Health expert, or group thereof, which would come at a significant cost due to the complex and extended nature of both developing a new Oral Health Strategy and pre-requisite Oral Health Needs Assessment. The only dental professionals already within the Department or Board that have the appropriate additional knowledge, skills, and qualifications, do not have the workload capacity to even support on such matters. Business planning would also be necessary for the other professional and administrative support that would be required from within the Department and HSC organisations.

That said, my Chief Dental Officer’s professional view is that, within that context, most of the 2007 Oral Health Strategy remains fit for purpose, given the current evidence-base and cost-effectiveness of available interventions, and available funding.

We are though making excellent progress in some key oral health outcomes. For example, recently emerging data for 5 year-old children provides evidence of further significant improvement in respect of the relevant Oral Health Strategy targets. One target was to improve the then 39% of 5 year-old children who were decay free, to a level of at least 50% within ten years. In 2013 the data indicated we had achieved a figure of 60%, and the emerging 2018/19 data indicates that around 70% of our 5 year-old children are decay free. There have also been very significant additional improvements in terms of the severity of dental disease in this age group of children. Another Oral Health Strategy target for 5 year-olds aimed to improve upon the relevant technical metric by a threshold of 24% and 2013 data highlighted a 44% improvement. The latest data appears to indicate that a further 18% improvement has been achieved, again in around half the original time period, since then. As these younger children grow up, notable further improvements in the oral health outcomes of 12 and 15 year-old cohorts are consequently expected

These are notable successes within the extant strategic direction, especially given the many regional differences we face at a UK level that enable England to generally achieve better child oral health outcomes.

And the work continues. My Chief Dental Officer has established Oral Health Options Groups to allow for the consideration and development of further oral health policy options for the two most urgent groups at present, namely children and the elderly. In parallel with this, I will continue to pursue additional funding for this important area.