Dr. Dympna Kavanagh:

It is of particular interest that when we undertook workforce analysis as part of our policy development, we found that almost 40% of new registrants who came into the State every year came from other European countries. As the Senator rightly said, Irish graduates are registered. It is important to note that many students in the dental schools come from other countries. As part of an agreement with Canada, the Canadian authorities provide a substantial contribution to the education aspect. When we talk about people graduating from Irish schools, we are not necessarily talking about Irish people. Canadian graduates might want to go back to their homes in Canada. People who came here for their education might want to go back to other areas. There is a phenomenal degree of mobility in the European Union. A sizeable majority of those who come here from other European states - I have the figures available - stay beyond five or seven years. I think our policy on this point aims to give graduates more opportunities to acquire a breadth of skills from the time they graduate. It is about having a mentored environment for them, not for one, two or three years, even if the work done in these years is of benefit, but for a much longer period. It is about helping them to establish in practice in order that they can set up principalships in practice after five years. This is all knowledge nobody is going to gain overnight. It is important that we focus on the mentoring framework in the long term. Many other professions have done it. Ours tends to be very isolated. This emerged clearly when we consulted dentists. They told us that they felt isolated from their peers, particularly in rural environments. That led to a fundamental change in how we were approaching education. We realised something much more substantial than a one-year programme was needed. My colleague, the chief dental officer in Britain, is very firm on the point that this is an NHS scheme, rather than an education scheme or an intern scheme. I think it has been somewhat misrepresented. She constantly berates me for the misrepresentation of the scheme. The scheme in the United Kingdom is linked with an NHS practice and attached to that practice only. If one is entering into private practice as a UK graduate, one enters into practice in the same way as every other European graduate. The scheme is linked with the NHS system only.