Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

My real worry here is that we are just going to expand the service. At the moment, UCD, in the middle of Dublin city, provides the veterinary courses for Ireland. If you look at the actual demographics, particularly for the bovine population, the majority are in Munster. We need a geographical spread of placements when it comes to veterinary colleges. I would be concerned if the Department was looking just to expand. We need to look to the future and future-proof this model. We need a new campus with a new university, just to give a little diversity when it comes to the capabilities of these courses. We have small animal and large animal practices. We now need a real focus on where the food industry is going to be and how that is going to develop. I would be of the view that an expansion of the campus is not the key here. We need a new campus and that new campus needs to incorporate large animals as the key focus. If we can do that, we will future-proof our industry going forward. This is a multi-billion euro industry we are talking about here, which will not survive unless we have this line of vets going forward. The new campus scenario has to be top of the agenda. I would be very disappointed if we came back with an expansion.