Mr. Ian Fleming:

In 2022, some 222 people - the figure is easy to remember - who were educated abroad came onto the register. More than 100 vets have joined the register so far in 2023 and no one has graduated yet from UCD so we will be in the same ballpark range again. As the Deputy will see from the graph, this has been rising year on year, except for the blip after the financial collapse in 2008. That caused a blip for seven or eight years. We are on a rising programme at the moment. The demand is rising and the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated that rise because the number of companion animals increased. Specifically, our programme is to deal with what we see as a threat to rural communities and to the food industry, that is, a shortfall of vets. They are the issues.