Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am glad the Deputy raised that because that is what the review has done. People often ask me to create another college place in X area. For some courses that is relatively easy to do. However, in a course with a clinical or work placement element, there is no ability to create the place without the matching work place. We have worked jointly with the Department of Health. We have identified what we can do from a university point of view and asked the Department of Health to identify the work placements. We have married the two and now we are progressing it. This is not all an exercise for the future. We have increased the number of medicine places by 60 last year and a further 60 this year. We have several hundred more nursing places and more therapy places, including in the North. We are actively on this journey. We want to make more progress on veterinary medicine. The Deputy has raised radiation therapy with me regularly and I will follow up directly with him on that.

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