Mr. Jimmy Quinn:

Senator Dooley is right. One of the problems that has evolved with entry into veterinary study is social exclusion. When I qualified 25 or 30 years ago, the phenomenon of the grind school was not there. Many people from schools throughout the country managed to get a reasonable leaving certificate and got into UCD. Those days are gone. We are looking at top-level leaving certificate results to get into the course. This may involve a couple of years in grind school, which involves a parent who can pay for that grind school and a parent who can pay for children to live in Dublin, which is one of the most expensive capital cities in Europe. Thereby, we are automatically excluding quite a lot of people who would make good vets.

As the Senator described, we need to look again at selection methods and education methods to produce someone who is happy to live and work in a rural environment. One of the things that impressed us a lot when we initially went to UL was Professor Liam Glynn and his No Doctor, No Village campaign. The veterinary problem is pan-European. There is a realisation that once you get into trouble with supplying vets to the countryside, the countryside dies. There is that phenomenon that is described in Irish as bánú na tuaithe, where the countryside withers and dies. This is because they are part of the critical rural infrastructure. No more than in the case of the rural GP, if the vet is not there, things will have to change, because you will no longer be able to get someone to calve or lamb an animal or treat a sick animal. Therefore, agriculture has to change, and maybe not in a good way, in response to those deficits.