Dr. Alan Wall:

The Senator's first question was about students who have other backgrounds, such as graduates in agriculture. We do not have a view on this, but we would not mind it if it did happen. One of the things we are concerned about, and UCD does this, is that there is a portfolio that tries to recognise the experience of individuals. It would be a matter for the college, but if it were possible for it to take, for example, agricultural science students into second year, that would not be an issue for us. It would be a matter for the colleges themselves, because, as the Senator knows, the way we run the system in Ireland, the colleges are autonomous institutions. We would certainly guide them towards at least the kind of portfolio that UCD does. It is our view that the portfolio UCD does could be broader, in order to deal with some of the issues that have been raised around the backgrounds of people who are getting in, the experience or the expectations they might have had of what veterinary practice might be like. We are open to that and it is not an issue for us.

I will come back to the points issue, if the Senator does not mind. I will address the issue of expansion. In our expressions of interest, we had four or five professional areas we were interested in to see what we could provide as a system and how the system would respond. As part of that, we asked right across medicine, veterinary and nursing, which are groups that already provide those professions, whether they could do an expansion. UCD, in fairness, responded positively to that. As the Senator alluded to earlier, I have a difficulty talking about some of this in detail, because it is an issue going to Government-----