Sinn Féin spokesperson on Further and Higher Education, Rose Conway-Walsh TD, has called for action to resolve 'the scale of inequality in the training of doctors'.
Speaking in the Dáíl, Deputy Conway-Walsh said that 'the government must make it possible for ordinary people to access Graduate Entry Medicine (GEM )'. She stated: "Graduate Entry Medicine (GEM ) is an alternative route into studying medicine. However, it is a route that is out of reach for most students and families. Fees are approximately €15,000 a year - €60,000 over the four years. There are no government supports to help students that don’t come from wealthy families. The only option is a bank loan from a sole provider. However, to secure the necessary bank loan, a student needs to be independently wealthy or have a guarantor that earns more than €50,000 euro a year. Most people in this country don’t earn €50,000 a year.
"If a student’s parents do not earn enough they are simply turned away. This means that about two thirds of society are excluded from GEM. I have been in contact with a young man from Limerick, who, after being accepted onto a GEM course, tried to get this bank loan and was told that he needed a guarantor to sign the loan; and that the guarantor had to earn at least €50,000 a year. The young man in question comes from a single parent household. His mother doesn’t earn more than €50,000 and was devastated to find out her son couldn’t go on and fulfil his dream of becoming a doctor.
"Studying medicine and becoming a doctor shouldn’t be the preserve of one class in society. It is unacceptable that we have a situation where we have a shortage of consultants and GPs and many young people being denied the opportunity to be trained to become doctors. Only about half of the 1,353 places in medicine each year go to students from Ireland. There has been essentially no increase in the quota of 708 of Irish and other EU students here since Fine Gael came to power in 2011. In the same time period, there has been around 100 new places for more lucrative international students.
"This is why every year it gets more and more competitive to try and go on and study medicine. Other students go and first do another degree and then try to go back and study medicine through the graduate entry route. However, Irish students make up far less than half of the students accepted. Out of 91 GEM places offered by the Royal Colleges of Surgeons, only 19 go to Irish students.
"In UCC only 33 out of 88 are Irish. Reform of how we are training doctors is essential. We urgently need to increase the number of places on medical courses with the aim of becoming self-reliant in terms of training of healthcare professionals, instead of relying on international recruitment. Irish students should be given the opportunity to become doctors regardless of their background."
