Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There is a substantial amount available to increase the number of apprenticeships in various areas. The Minister now needs to look at increasing the number of places in our third level institutions for key areas such as healthcare and others. Taking dentistry as an example, in some colleges up to 50% of the places are taken by students from abroad because the colleges are trying to get money in. How can the number of places in universities be increased rather than them being reliant on students coming from abroad to make up the cost of running particular faculties? This applies in to radiotherapy, medicine, nursing and other areas that need to be expanded. I remind the Minister that the population has increased by 1.5 million or 40%, and therefore, the number of the training places in each of these areas needs to increase by 40% as well.

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