Dr. Carmel Halton:

On our graduates, I have been the director of the masters of social work programme for nine to ten years. I have been involved in social work education for much longer than that and my knowledge of the field is that the vast majority of our graduates want to stay in Ireland. However, there are always a few who will choose, on graduation, to go outside of Ireland. Probably three or four on our masters programme go every single year.

On those graduates who I know who go abroad, and from what I know about what they say about the reasons for choosing to go abroad, which is anecdotal rather than systematic research, some of them want to do as the Deputy says, to travel the world and it is great that we have graduates who have a licence to travel the world with the credentials that we give them. We are a highly educated workforce. However, there are others who are leaving disaffected from their experiences of being in social work and while-----