Ms Deborah Kelleher:

We need practice tutors to support students on placement. We originally applied for six practice tutors nationally, which would be one in each public department. We had hoped that what we proposed would be effective from September of this year but we did not get the approval. A great deal of work was done in the background to try to get it through but we were not successful this year. We did not get an explanation as to why. Trinity was not able to increase its number of places that would have been effective from this year, nor was UCC, so we must wait until 2025.