Malcolm Byrne (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am rather surprised at Senator Gavan. I assume he will also be calling on his leader and others within Sinn Féin to refuse to attend the $1,000 plate dinners they have been having in the United States and that there will be no Sinn Féin representatives attending any US function. The hypocrisy of Sinn Féin on some of these issues really is outstanding.

In a more positive vein, I certainly support my colleague, Senator Ardagh, in the Bill she is bringing forward today.Like Senator Clonan, I would also like to wish the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, well following his decision to move to the next chapter. I thank him for his service.

I want to again raise the question of graduate education medicine, which I have raised in this House before. Bank of Ireland pulled the only private way of financing a graduate education medicine programme two years ago, so there is essentially no real way for students to get a loan to pursue this course. Those students are not eligible for SUSI. They tend to be older students, so they mostly stay within the country when they graduate. They may go away, but only for a year or so. This course was to encourage diversity, but because it costs nearly €18,000 per year - and I appreciate this is not the full economic cost - it is a very expensive undertaking. This means that the socio-economic profile of those students is not as broad as it should be.

Earlier in the year, the Government rightly took the decision to fund a number of students from the State to study at Queen's University Belfast and Ulster University. Effectively, we are subsidising those students to do that yet we do not have the same level of support for those who are in graduate education medicine. The Cultural and Educational Panel has a longstanding motion to be debated before this House. It is on the socio-economic profiles of those who are studying law and medicine, and I ask for that to be moved. I ask the Leader to invite the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Deputy Patrick O’Donovan, to the House to have a debate on medical education in Ireland.