Dr. Tadhg Crowley:

It is huge. First, the days of people coming out of college debt-free are gone. Most students, particularly postgraduate students who have gone into postgraduate medicine and do a degree somewhere else, go back in at 24 or 25 years of age and by the time they leave medical school, they will have a debt of approximately €100,000 to pay off.

They could go to a financial institution to borrow money to buy a house to set up, because that is what is required but a house, with the various health regulations that are there, must be equipped and invested in. It is not just a matter of buying a house; they have to equip it to meet certain standards. Then they have to employ people on top of that, including practice secretaries and practice managers. Before they start practising at all, they could find themselves in debt to the tune of close to €1 million. No bank, in this day and age, is going to give the imprimatur to them set up and all will be fine. It just will not happen.