Professor Chris Lynch:

Senator Burke's points on the CPD are very well made. The Senator is speaking from his own experience within the legal profession. We would like to have mandatory CPD within dentistry. All the organisations in dentistry in Ireland feel that way. It allows our practitioners to reassure patients that the dentists themselves are engaging in updating their knowledge and providing contemporary high-quality care. It is about creating a framework which will allow our practitioners and dentists in Ireland to reassure the public that they are updating their knowledge and maintaining high-quality care for their patients.

In another way, it links back to the questions about foundation training and the year of supervised and mentored care. I am a graduate from the Republic of Ireland. I am a graduate from Cork. My first job was as an associate in the UK 20 years ago where I worked in somebody's practice without the availability of a suitable mentoring arrangement. The introduction of such a scheme in Ireland would be of great benefit to our graduates and to our patients.

In the UK, there is considerable research. Educational research has been carried out on graduating dentists moving into this year of sheltered training and moving onwards into independent care. It shows that there is a significant increase in the confidence of practitioners, but also in their ability to deliver high-quality care to their patients.

Within dental schools, we have directives and guidelines as to what we teach and train our students. Our students are trained quite significantly in terms of the clinical skills they are expected to deliver, but there is an overall process where graduating students can move or transition from dental school into independent practice, and the year of mentored training and foundation training has been shown to have a significant positive effect in that regard.