Waterford boy facing 10-year wait for dental treatment gets emergency appointment

Tiernan Murphy-Power, a six-year-old autistic boy from Waterford was facing a ten-year wait to have three teeth removed until Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald raised the case during Leaders' Questions, stating that delays to dental treatment for children was "unacceptable".

Tiernan's father Eamonn Murphy said it was like ten Christmases at once when they got the call earlier this week to say the boy has secured an emergency appointment to have the procedure carried out next Thursday.

Deputy McDonald had told the Dáil that Tiernan was one of 7,000 children waiting for more than a year for urgent and serious orthodontic care and within that number, 1,100 children have been waiting more than four years.

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Taoiseach Micheál Martin said it was "absolutely unacceptable" that a child was being denied urgent care and said he would discuss the issue with the Health Service Executive CEO Bernard Gloster.

Tiernan's father said that the family had been told on more than one occasion that they could be facing a wait of up to ten years on the public waiting list, or if they went the private route, they could still face a waiting period of six months which could cost them over €2,500.

Speaking on RTÉ's Today with Claire Byrne, Mr Murphy said that they were prepared to go private, but were even finding that difficult after approaching a number of dentists locally.

The issue with Tiernan's teeth began in October 2024, and since then he has been in a lot of pain and has missed school. His father said that he loved school, and that missing days on and off had caused him to regress.

Tiernan was given a course of antibiotics and pain medication, which Mr Murphy said were helping, but it was not always possible to get Tiernan to take medicine or to keep it down.

He said: "It has been a fight the whole time. He hasn't been sleeping with the pain as we can only get so much pain medication into him. It has been difficult to see him like that.

"Before this he was a happy little child, full of life and he was a character. He can't afford to miss any more school."

Mr Murphy shared that he and his partner Averil had no choice but to take time off work to care for Tiernan but since getting the appointment, they feel they can breath again.

He said: "We nearly fell down when we heard he had an appointment at the dentistry department of Cork University Hospital. Thanks be to God he's getting look after."

Despite the challenges the family faced getting to this point and while they are grateful to now have the appointment secured for Tiernan, Mr. Murphy said the family never thought they would have to go public with their story.

He said that through going public, they wanted to raise awareness, not just for their own family, but to help in some way to ensure that a better system was put in place for other children like Tiernan.