The Minister for Education approves the limits on the intake into primary teaching programmes. The intakes for the B.Ed and PME primary ITE programmes are 1,000 and 200 respectively for the coming academic year. There is no such intake limit on post-primary teaching programmes.
Historically, the Department of Education has endeavoured to manage the supply of trained primary teachers in an effort to achieve equilibrium between the supply of and the demand for trained teachers and as such sets limits on the yearly intake.
The current quota for EU entrants to medicine stands at 708. This quota was established as a recommendation of the Report of the Working Group on Undergraduate Medical Education and Training, also known as the Fottrell Report.
The intake quota for nursing stands at 1,819. The quota exists due to limits on the number of clinical placements that can be facilitated by the health service.