Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail)
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I want to consider career progression and attracting vets into large animal practice. If the vet is coming out of college and making a career choice, he or she may look at a large animal practice. If such practices are run by large corporates, that vet will know he or she will be an employee there all of his or her life and will never have an opportunity to become a partner or an owner of that business. We all know our vets, and most of them when they came out of college started in a practice and maybe after a few years moved to another practice. Not always but in a large majority of cases they became a partner in that practice going forward and they could see career progression for themselves. I believe this could be a major stumbling block if corporates get a serious foothold in practices in the country. Young vets coming out of college may say to themselves, "I am coming in here as an employee, there is not the career progression I would like", and they would look at other opportunities to practise their degree. I believe career progression under the corporate ownership model will seriously put under pressure the availability of vets for large animal practices.