Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

One of the reasons I ask is that I am on the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport and Communications. We were in this very room last week, talking about driver licences. I was able to give an example from my emails, of a youngster in west Clare facing a 29-week wait to get tested. He missed out on becoming a paramedic, because of that. We were told last week, in this very room, that there is now a way to triage and get people to the top of the list, if they are destined for professions such as paramedic ambulance cover. We ask NAS to engage with that, if it is not already, because the RSA and testing sites have a facility in recent weeks to triage and leap-frog young drivers who might be destined for paramedic work to the top of the list.

I see NAS has plans for September to have 128 new entrants to the course in Cork, which is fantastic. What about the course that operates in UL? Of course, it operates independently, but the pathway from the University of Limerick into NAS is not defined. I note that part of students' training requires them to go overseas. I think they go to Manchester for a six-month period or thereabouts. NAS has more expertise, but from what I can ascertain from speaking with many undergraduates, is that when they are in Manchester, the NHS is snapping people up and keeping them afterwards. We are putting hundreds of people through our third level system, the best and brightest of paramedics, and ensuring they take up contracts with the NHS. Should there be a better linkage between UL, akin to Cork, in order that we not only train them up to the highest of standards, but we retain them?