The Irish Dental Association (IDA) have called on the government to limit the number of non-European Economic Area (EEA) students enrolled in dentistry courses at Trinity and University College Cork (UCC).
The group is requesting a 20% cap for non-EEA students in the next year, decreasing to 10% in the next three years.
In a press release issued on Tuesday, the IDA raised concerns about shortages of dentists in the Irish workforce, citing a survey which found that 63% of Irish dentists “struggle to recruit associate dentists”.
Of 48 new dental students at Trinity in 2023/2024, 16 (33%) were non-EEA students. At UCC the number of non-EEA students was 25 of 53 (47%) for the same year.
The IDA says that these students “usually return to their country of origin to practise dentistry rather than practising in Ireland,” contributing to labour shortages.
The association criticised the government for relying on international students paying “over €45,000 per annum” to compensate for “decades of underinvestment” in Irish dental schools.
In addition to the cap on non-EEA students, the IDA is also calling for an added €20 million in funding for Trinity and UCC dental schools.
IDA President Dr Rory Boyd called the current model of producing dental graduates “unsustainable” and “broken fundamentally”. He added that “significant” investment is needed to increase the number of Irish and EEA dental graduates in order to meet the demand of patients who are “suffering the consequences of the shortage of dentists”.
The group also pointed to the use of a “lottery” to allocate CAO places in dentistry at Trinity this year.
“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,” Dr Boyd said.
“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,” he continued.
Six courses in Trinity required random selection to allocate places this year, however, dental science was the only one with a minimum entry requirement of 625 points.
Last month, Vice-Provost Orla Shiels called the use of random selection “a cruel arbiter when students have worked so hard”.
