Dr. Eamon Croke:

As a part-time lecturer in the dental hospital and somebody who has inspected the schools and was involved in setting up the reciprocal agreement with Canada, I can say the Irish schools are looked at with great intensity by Canadian and Australian representatives. We pass tests.

The groundwork has been done for reciprocal agreements with New Zealand and Australia. This is the standing of Irish schools. The dental schools in Dublin and Cork have a different approach to how they teach, but the standards there and the ability of students to be able to come out and practise as independent dentists are what the Dental Council of Ireland looks at. As I said, any time an inspection is done now, we have people who come over from Canada and observe the process. They will not sign up to a reciprocal agreement unless we achieve a certain standard. This is important in the same way to the colleges because of the Canadian students who come to them. Those students want to be able to go home. These applicants must do an entry exam and graduates from the EU must do the same exam to gain admission. This aspect, therefore, is based on the standard of the schools.