Construction of dental school in Cork must be a 'national priority'
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The construction of a new dental school in Cork must become a national priority, the Government has been told, amid warnings of a €20m funding crisis in Ireland's dental schools.
The Irish Dental Association called for the core funding crisis to be addressed, and for a cap to be imposed on the number of foreign students who can study dentistry here, as figures show that almost half of the total student intake at the country’s two dental schools — UCC and Trinity — was from outside the EU or European Economic Area (EEA).
Most non-EEA graduates leave Ireland after qualifying to practice elsewhere.
Trinity’s dental student intake for 2023/24 was 48 students, 16 of whom (or 35%) were non-EEA students.
UCC’s dental student intake for the same year was 53, 25 of whom (47%) were non-EEA students.
Dental schools are using these foreign students, who pay over €45,000 a year to train, to cross-subsidise Irish dental students due to the years of under-resourcing of the dental schools, the association said.
Its surveys have found that 63% of dentists here struggle to recruit associate dentists, while the HSE’s public dental service has 74 (23%) fewer dentists employed than in 2009.
“The current model of producing dental graduates is unsustainable and Irish patients are suffering the consequences of the shortage of dentists,” said Dr Rory Boyd, president of the Irish Dental Association.
“We need to see significant investment in our dental schools from the Government to increase the number of Irish and EEA dental graduates to meet patient demand.
“Irish students who achieve the incredible feat of 625 points in their leaving certificate are having to face a lottery for acceptance into the dentistry courses in TCD and may well face the same in UCC before long.
“Not only is it extremely disappointing for the Irish students who achieve maximum points and cannot select their first choice of dentistry, it is an unacceptable loss of potential dentists that are badly needed here in Ireland."
The association called for proper funding and a cap on foreign student numbers as has been proposed in Australia - starting at 20% of all places and decreasing to 10% over the next three years.
Compounding these problems, it said funding has also been withdrawn from the planned new dental school at UCC.
Sean O’Driscoll, the chairperson of UCC’s governing authority, said while work to address its deficit led to a pause on major capital projects earlier this year, the construction of a new dental school in Cork must become a national priority.
“One of the projects that has priority status as far as UCC is concerned is the dental hospital, which is in a dreadful condition,” he said.
“I have been to see it and it is nothing to be proud of. There is a huge anomaly in terms of the funding of the dental hospital in Cork and the dental hospital in Dublin.
“The 2014 Quigley Report demonstrated the inequity of state funding going into the dental hospital in Dublin and into the dental hospital in Cork. This is something that has to be a national priority.”