The main support available to students is the statutory based Student Grant Scheme where students are studying for the first time or are progressing to study at a higher level. This means that a student must be moving from year to year within a course, having successfully completed the previous year or be transferring from one course to another, where the award for the subsequent course is of a higher level than the previous course.
Students pursuing a second level 8 degree course, including graduate entry programmes, are not eligible for a grant as they do not meet the progression criteria of the Scheme. The objective of this policy regarding progression is to help as many students as possible to obtain one qualification at each level of study, meaning that an individual already holds a qualification, they are not eligible for funding at the same level again.
However, my Department is committed to working closely with the Department of Health and its agencies to ensure that the conditions are in place to support further growth in healthcare professions including increasing the supply of medicine graduates.
As the Deputy is aware, on 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.
This marks 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.
This agreement included additional Graduate Entry Medicine (GEM) 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.
In order to widen access to GEM programmes, and give assistance towards the financial burden on each student pursuing these programmes, the fees of participating EU graduate entry medicine students are partly subsidised by the State via the Higher Education Authority (HEA).
In the academic year 2022/23 the State contribution was €12,100 per student with the balance of fees payable by the student. This State subsidy is being increased incrementally. By 2026, all graduate entry places will be funded by the state at €14,500.
We also introduced a new system where bursaries that are provided to the most socio-economically disadvantaged students under the National Access Plan can retain those bursaries throughout their GEM programme.
My priority is to ensure that we build capacity in a sustainable way which will allow for steady, growth and forward planning by both the health and higher education sectors for a graduate pipeline to meet the needs of the health system and society as a whole.
