Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael)
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I welcome the Minister and his Department officials. It is exciting to see the HEA expression of interest. It is nearly 1,400 places on courses, if I have counted correctly. The Minister said it involves 11 institutions across medicine, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry and veterinary.

My interest is in the focus on balanced regional development. How do we ensure students are based in locations across the country? That means, hopefully, they will continue to work in such locations. The report will look at 200 doctors, 700 nurses, the guts of 200 pharmacists, over 60 dentists and 230 vets annually. That is phenomenal. The course the Minister mentioned in terms of the medical graduate entry in University of Galway is innovative. I pay tribute to the college of medicine there. They are looking to address the incredible shortages in rural areas, particularly around recruiting GPs. I have already fought on this. We fought to get Westdoc support, to provide night-time support to GPs trying to deal with spread-out rural communities and travelling at night-time to do house calls. It is a wonderful role to be based in a community but if we do not support them through technology and by bringing in people who want to work in these regions, it will be difficult.

What I really like about this model is rural remote delivery of healthcare. They based this on a successful model in northern Ontario. They are looking at what works well in the likes of Canada. They have shown that graduates from these courses are 20 to 30 times more likely to locate in the areas where they worked. The amazing thing about this course is the person does the first two years in university. They are coming in as graduates so are older, potentially. They are based in primary care networks in towns, potentially in the west. They will be working in a hospital environment for a part of that. In Saolta, for example, there are seven hospitals, including Portiuncula in my home town of Ballinasloe, Roscommon University Hospital, Castlebar, University Hospital Galway and Letterkenny. Those graduates and recruits will have incredible experience of working in these environments. It is an evidence-based model that has been proven to work. That is important.

On pharmacy, it is wonderful to see this is one of the courses shortlisted. I understand it is going for the next stage of review. It would be the first time in the west a university would deliver pharmacy courses. In pharmacies and prescribing pharmacists, there are shortages in regional areas and hospitals, but also in companies. Multinationals based in Galway like Medtronic want to recruit people. If we have a course delivering the likes of pharmacists annually in the west it will support academia, research, delivering for patients, communities and hospitals and on a wider scale for industry, and will embed that. We are about balanced regional development. I will be saying it over and over again. It is important to me that we see investment. Locating courses in these areas is important. Will the Minister comment on the importance of the regional perspective in what he has seen from HEA today? I thank the Minister because in the Mountbellow campus in my constituency of Roscommon-Galway, they are looking at veterinary courses. To become a rural pet and based in a community, what better place than our university campus in Mountbellow?