Dr. Roisín Plunkett:

A couple of the questions require short answers and one of them requires a slight clarification. I refer to the question about how many people graduate from the College of Psychiatrists of Ireland and linking it to 50% of those people leaving the country. Those are fundamentally different colleges we are talking about. Some 50% of medical graduates leave the country after graduating from university. The College of Psychiatrists of Ireland is a specialist training body like the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland or the Irish College of General Practitioners, so once one has qualified as a doctor and has done one's intern year, one is a registered medical practitioner. One can then go into a specialism, either directly or after some years practising. Dr. Kennedy might be best placed to answer how many people actually graduate. One has to do one's basic specialist training, BST, and the examination in order to proceed on to higher specialist training, HST, and then through.