Despite a day of protracted talks on 28 October, health sector unions emerged ready for 24 hour strike action, due to take place on 24 November. Very little of the detail has been worked out in terms of duration or services affected but it is safe to predict that if it goes ahead:

* it will, in effect, be like Christmas day with minimal services available
* Nurses will continue to staff wards with emergency cover
* The Irish Nurses Organisation are at the talks but have no plans to ballot yet - but their members will provide emergency cover if on strike
* Planned procedures, out patient and day services will be closed or postponed
* it's unclear what will happen in community and continuing care, e.g. intellectual disability, nursing home care
* nominal levels of care and will have knock in implications for the health services and will cause disruptions to patients

The HSE and the Irish Dental Association (IDA) have strongly rejected reports that in excess of 10 per cent of the €85 million budget spent on a dental scheme may be paid to dentists making fraudulent and inappropriate claims. The scheme is known as the Dental Treatment Services Scheme (DTSS).

Fintan Hourihan, the chief executive of the IDA, which represents dentists, said the assertion was “misleading and unfair” while Paddy Burke, of the HSE’s Primary Care Reimbursement Scheme which makes these payments, said he was “satisfied that there is a sophisticated set of controls in place to prevent fraudulent payments”.

The Health Service Executive (HSE) has been severely criticised for its failure to manage its own public dental service that provides free dental care for children, people with disabilities and older people in care. The criticisms are contained in a new report on the service. The Public Dental Service (PDS) has a budget of €60 million for 2009 and services are provided by 200 dentists, working as HSE employees.

The Department of Health appointed Dr Paul Batchelor, a London-based oral care consultant to write an Analysis and Evaluation of the Public Dental Service of the Health Service Executive , a copy of which has been seen by me.

More than 10 per cent of the claims made by private dentists could be inappropriate or fraudulent, writes Sara Burke

A SERIES of unpublished reports on the free dental scheme for adults reveals that in excess of 10 per cent of the €85 million budget is paid out by the HSE on inappropriate or fraudulently claimed payments by dentists in private practice.

Margaret Whitehead is synonymous with strategies to reduce health inequalities and improve the health of the poorest. She is a professor of public health in Liverpool and wrote the follow up to the seminal Black Report in England - the first official government report in the developed world to document the extent of health inequalities that exist between rich and poor. This report made clear the social gradient that exists in health - the more income one earns and the higher one is up the social scale, the better one's health. Whitehead’s book ‘The Health Divide’, which also included the Black Report, was a classic Penguin best seller and sold well over 100,000 copies – a very unusual achievement in public health literature.

In the last week alone, four reports detailing the performance of Ireland's health service have been published. Yet they hardly hit the public radar -  blanket media coverage of NAMA is a sure boon for HSE public relations. The reports provide myriad facts and figures - the June and July HSE PR reports, the ESRI HIPE report for 2007, the Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General which has over 50 pages on different aspects of the health service.  So what do these reports really tell us?