UCC drops plans to move dental school and hospital to bigger site
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University College Cork (UCC) has dropped plans for Cork University Dental School and Hospital to move to a bigger site, despite its dean warning that the current building is “untenable” without significant investment.
The change in plans for the school, one of only two in Ireland, comes amid a national crisis in dentist numbers. One in six patients are already waiting over three months for routine appointments, the Irish Dental Association recently warned.
The school, which treats almost 11,000 patients and trains around 50 Irish and international students annually, shares a campus with Cork University Hospital (CUH).
Back in 2019, UCC was granted planning permission for a five-storey building in Curraheen but this did not progress.
Professor Paul Brady said: “We had to get UCC to make a decision, we couldn’t remain in limbo. The university had to make a hard decision to tell us to stay where we are on the CUH site. I find that very frustrating – I almost feel it is untenable to stay here."
The school has "outgrown where we are", he warned.
The new school was designed and went to tender. “Basically due to building inflation and covid, the project got shelved,” Prof Brady said.
That gap could be filled by state funding, he claimed.
“I personally estimate €40m from the exchequer would see us in a position that we could go ahead and build a proper state of the art dental school for southern Ireland and provide dentists for the whole country.
"We have a frail, old building. It’s got a leaking roof and other issues as would be expected of a building that age," he said.
Equipment also needs upgrading or even replacing, he said.
A key concern is the need to expand annual numbers upwards, from the mix of 24 to 26 Irish students and an equal number of international students.
The school has an agreement with the HSE to treat public patients and also takes fee-paying patients, coming to 10,745 patients and 56,586 treatments per year.
However patients, along with students and staff, are now impacted by space constraints.
“The actual CUH campus really is very congested now, there’s a lot going on there,” Prof Brady said.
“Two of the new buildings starting construction shortly will be within a few metres of us and it will become almost impossible to function here.”
The hospital needs the space on which the schools sits, he added.
In contrast, the Curraheen site is owned by UCC with plans for a 8,710m² building and a modern approach including digital dentistry.
The Higher Education Authority has recommended investment to boost training places nationally for dentistry, medicine and veterinary courses.
Options for achieving this are being examined through the departments of health, agriculture and higher and further education.