REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE IRISH AND BRITISH DENTAL ASSOCIATIONS’ ANNUAL
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE IRISH AND BRITISH DENTAL ASSOCIATIONS’ ANNUAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE
This is indeed a very special occasion and I am grateful to Donal Atkins for the kind invitation that allows me to be part of it.
There can be no more appropriate setting for this, the first joint meeting of the British and Irish Dental Associations than the elegant City Hall of my native city, a city struggling courageously to find fresh, imaginative and generous ways of dealing with these two very labels of identity, Irish and British.
The two dental associations are making their own historic and powerful contribution to the journey which these two islands, and the two jurisdictions on this island are making towards mature, comfortable partnership with one another. I thank you for the witnesses you are and indeed have been for many a long day, to the mutual benefits that come from respectful collaboration and joint endeavour. For of course although this Conference is a first, it builds on a longstanding relationship between the two professional bodies which has been more than simply cordiality at a distance but has seen generations of dental graduates from Ireland, Northern Ireland and Great Britain work together, weaving a rich tapestry of shared experiences and an even richer tapestry of friendships.
Mutual recognition of training and qualifications has long been a cornerstone of the warm relationship between the two associations and indeed my husband’s career track as a Dublin trained dentist who worked for all of his career in Northern Ireland is far from untypical, though nowadays the traffic moves in both directions.
That personal association with your profession has given me a range of insights into your world not always available or immediately obvious to the patient. I have to say it is an association I did not actively seek. I am your bog-standard, fear-of-dentist phobic patient and that is why I was very careful to marry an accountant. Six years into our marriage, he broke down and confessed to being a closet dentist and when he became a late vocation to dentistry we had quite a bit of explaining to do to those who found the transition hard to figure. That line of questioning lasted until my brother, a thirty something military pilot also inexplicably became a born again dentist and that even more weird transformation took the pressure off us. And now of course I find myself at an even more advanced age admitted to an elite circle of Honorary Life Members of the Irish Dental Association, an honour I am very appreciative of for it is good to be an honorary member of a profession which enjoys such a high level of public admiration and respect. It’s a novelty for someone like me who belongs to the legal profession! As a lawyer though, I have to confess to a silent resentment that a profession so closely associated rightly or wrongly in the public perception with fear, pain and instruments of torture should be considerably more popular than lawyers. I remember when Martin and I went to see Jurassic Park how the audience cheered and clapped when the dinosaur ate the lawyer. There is no doubt in my mind that despite all the scraping, drilling and forced drinking of pink liquid the audience would never have done that to a dentist, worse still I know Steven Spielberg would never have even thought of having a dentist eaten.
Being married to a dentist does alter your perspective on things. For birthdays he
buys me perfume. I access an on-line gift catalogue for dentists and choose between scrubs, monogrammed chisels and cardigans with star-spangled excavator motifs. We go to weddings. I admire the bride’s dress. He admires her veneers. I know you all do it, so just for the record and to stop all dinner conversation dead, no crowns, veneers, bridges, implants or dentures, these teeth are all my own.…
Your profession is highly skilled, your workplaces technologically sophisticated, the work itself stressful and for many sole practitioners or small practices it can be a lonely enough place where the demands of an exacting science to keep up with the latest research and techniques, bring their own considerable pressures. It is a people-centred, not a paper-centred profession. You deal with children and adults who revert to childhood as soon as they cross your threshold. Often they are bewildered or nervous and part of your role is to create a relationship of trust capable of transcending those fears, getting the job done well and setting the scene for a relaxed ongoing relationship. At the same time you are employers, businessmen and women with all the additional tensions and worries those roles confer. That is of course why professional associations and conferences such as this are so important. They plug you in to a support network which helps sustain you professionally. Events like this are essential not just for the opportunity to share new wisdom and insight but for the opportunity to become re-enthused, refreshed in your vocation as dental practitioners. And you need that energy for the road ahead.
Dental health has been revolutionised in recent decades. The progress we have all benefited from is only possible because of the commitment and intellectual curiosity of the members of your profession, their pursuit of excellence, their care for the well-being of the public. And yet we know that there still is a long way to travel to overcome some of the more glaring disparities in oral health standards.
It is very encouraging to see the two Health departments on this island, the Department of Health and Children in the South and the Department of Health and Social Services, Northern Ireland co-funding an evaluation of an oral health programme for 7 to 11 year old children in areas of social deprivation. And a further programme on oral health promotion for adolescents has been agreed in principle between the Republic’s North Western Health Board and the Western Social Services Board of Northern Ireland. Peace dividends come in many different guises and these kind of joint endeavours ensure that the public, both North and South, are getting the very best that the two systems are capable of harnessing between them.
Dental professionals in common with other health professionals have been encouraged and facilitated to co-operate and collaborate on matters of mutual interest; to share information, to develop common data sets, to explore the potential for regular information sharing, to look at the potential for collaborative studies in fluoridated and non-fluoridated areas and to explore the potential for cross border training. These critical areas of co-operation and pooling of knowledge can only further enhance the clinical expertise in these islands and in so doing bring a better range of services to the public.
The partnership and collaboration shown by you in organising this conference and coming together here in Belfast will undoubtedly make smoother the paths of future partnerships and not just in the area of dental health. There are many spheres of life far remote from dental practice where the potential for partnership is currently being wasted. There are men and women of vision who want to change that and who are drawing courage and inspiration from your example. It is impossible to put a value on that dimension to the conference just as much as the benefit to dental practice which will result from it is also not easily amenable to measurement. But the downstream benefits are real and they will make the future a different place, a better place.
My own first childhood visit to a dentist was made not very far from here well over forty years ago. It is etched on my memory for all the same reasons that dreadful trauma generally etches itself on memory. But reflecting back on that experience I am struck by the level of trust and respect your profession has always enjoyed. Those are things not lightly given in today’s cynical old world. They are hard to earn, hard to keep on earning and yet you have done it from generation to generation. There is a sacred stewardship in being the holders of such a great trust. Your commitment to this joint conference, your interest in its subject matter, your being here, are to this lawyer’s eye, the best possible evidence of a profession which knows how to honour that trust.
I hope those who are new to Northern Ireland find a warm welcome here, for it is, in spite of history’s baleful legacy, a place of good-hearted and kindly people doing their best to make a happier future. I hope too that each of you will take away the best of shared memories, new friendships, embryonic new networks and a great surge of revitalised energy. If you do then all the months of hard work that went into this conference will have been vindicated and rewarded a thousand fold.
Thank you once again for allowing Martin and I to share this evening with you.