The establishment of a new vet school in Ireland will be discussed at a meeting of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine today (Wednesday, May 10).
Opportunities to create additional capacity in veterinary medicine through programme creation or expansion in the academic years 2024-25 and 2025-26 have been identified by the Higher Education Authority (HEA).
The findings of the HEA report will be “soon brought to government for decision“, the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (DFHERIS) said.
University College Dublin (UCD), which is currently the only higher education institution offering courses in veterinary medicine, has sought to expand its course intake.
The South East Technological University (SETU); University of Limerick (UL); Munster Technological University (MTU); and Atlantic Technological University (ATU) offered to create new veterinary courses.
Representatives from the HEA and the Veterinary Council of Ireland (VCI), as well as officials from the DFHERIS, and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) will attend today’s meeting.
Vet school
In a statement provided to the committee, the HEA said that a “number of these applications” for increased veterinary medicine provision were “considered viable” by an expert advisory panel.
The proposals, the HEA said, include opportunities to bring “regional balance” to the provision of veterinary medicine education as well as “different models” of veterinary medicine education.
The access to veterinary medicine in Ireland is “highly competitive”, the HEA said, with CAO [Central Applications Office] points ranging from 601-625 for 82 places delivered by UCD.
Speaking ahead of the meeting, Committee Cathaoirleach Deputy Jackie Cahill said there is a growing demand for veterinary services in Ireland, particularly from the farming sector.
Deputy Cahill told Agriland: “We have a number of students going outside of the country to study veterinary medicine.
“It doesn’t make any sense and hopefully with a second veterinary course up and running we remove the need for people going overseas to get a [qualification in veterinary medicine].”
In a statement to the committee, the DFHERIS said the expansion opportunities identified, if implemented, would have the potential to lead to a “significant change” in the number of domestic graduates which Ireland could produce over the next decade.
However, the department’s statement read that these opportunities come with a “very significant associated cost both in terms of capital, and ongoing staffing and resource implications”.
Farmed-animal practice
There are currently 3,307 veterinary practitioners and 1,157 veterinary nurses registered which operate from 749 veterinary practice premises across the country, according to VCI figures.
In total 70% of vets on the register are in clinical practice. Of those 40% are in companion animal practice; 35% in mixed-animal practice; 13% in farm animal and 12% in equine practice, the VCI said.
In a statement to the committee, the VCI said that 65% of the vets on the register qualified in UCD, while 35% qualified abroad with Budapest and Warsaw being the most popular locations.
The DAFM is currently updating a study on the availability of farmed-animal veterinary services in Ireland and expects to publish the latest version before the end of June.
The previous study commissioned in 2018, the DAFM said, did signal that certain rural areas in Ireland face challenges, with relatively few practitioners operating in some peripheral areas.