Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 17 October 2023
643. Deputy Mairéad Farrell asked the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science in relation to his announcement of an additional €4.1 million to "enhance the number of places" in GEM for EU students as part of Budget Expenditure Report (2024), can he outline the estimated number of places this equates to; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [45350/23]
View answerOn 12th July 2022 the Minister for Health and I announced an agreement with the Irish medical schools to increase the number of places available for EU students by 200 over the next five years.
The agreement reached with the medical schools begin with an additional 60 EU students in September 2022, climbing to 120 in September 2023, and up to 200 by 2026.
Minister Donnelly and I committed at that time to prioritising funding an expansion on an equal basis, together with moving the funding of existing medicine places to a more sustainable basis. Moving to a more sustainable funding basis is required to reduce medical schools' reliance on fees from non EU students.
We have followed through on that commitment this year with continued enhanced levels of funding from both departments to fund these places at a more sustainable rate.
The July 2022 agreement included Graduate Entry Medicine additional places. To date an additional 10 graduate entry places, 5 in 2022 and another 5 in 2023 have been created, with the other 110 places on direct entry programmes.
This marked a significant expansion in the number of places available to students applying through the CAO system. It increases the opportunities for students to progress to study medicine in Ireland and to help us build our talent pipeline.
