Derogation fallout!

In a previous Guest Editorial, Amalgam, Trams and Northern Ireland,¹ I explained the difficulties that colleagues in Northern Ireland (NI) would have faced if amalgam use for their patients had been banned, given that they were bound, following the Windsor Accord, by swathes of EU legislation, and, given that they use more amalgam per patient than other parts of the UK. In short, following lobbying by the BDA and the Department of Health to the EU, the legislation to ban the use of amalgam in January of this year was put back to 2034 in NI, this being termed a derogation, but the date might be sooner if the Minamata Agreement decrees that the ban on amalgam use is sooner, for example 2030, as originally anticipated.

I visited NI at the end of February and heard, first hand, the fallout from the derogation. This is how it is, but what dentists in NI and the Chief Dental Officer of Northern Ireland now face is a raft of administrative challenges, some of which I will now outline: