Dr. Conall Dennedy:

On the point of training and academia, I am going to bang the academic drum.

The three shields of medicine are that one provides absolute excellent care for one’s patients, one innovates to provide the best care for the future for one’s patients and one trains the doctors of the future. The last two require senior well-qualified individuals in permanent posts. Somebody in a permanent academic post can, over the period of their career, bring in €20 million to €30 million in non-Exchequer training and research funding to train doctors for the future. This is future planning and providing care for our doctors for the future.

Take the example of the ICAT programme, a group of eight physicians got together and applied to bring in €16.5 million in non-Exchequer funding from the Wellcome Trust. This programme funds doctors to do PhDs to be the academic and medical leaders of the future. While also providing fantastic healthcare, it leaks into our academic system and universities whose falling rankings we should be trying to increase as well. We have not mentioned medical students. We want to teach them to become the doctors for the future, as well as to become the excellent consultants, clinician scientists and academics we need for the future to provide cutting-edge healthcare for our patients.