Letter: can vets only be educated south of the Liffey or Shannon?

DEAR EDITOR: We are going to have new vet schools, because my esteemed colleagues, who wrote a letter in last week’s Irish Farmers Journal, campaigned for the last 20 years. We in the farming community owe them a debt of gratitude. I concur that we need regional balance, but I beg to differ with their proposal that one new vet school in Munster would achieve that.

An all-island regional balance is what we need. Animal disease respects no borders and ensuring a high level of veterinary service throughout the island benefits our entire agricultural community.

Why is there such opposition to a vet school in Donegal and Galway? The argument that a vet education cannot be shared between Donegal and Galway ignores the success of many other dual-campus vet schools. Almost all my fourth year at UCD vet school was spent on the Lyons Estate and in Glasgow I taught students in the city campus and in Lanarkshire.

Can vets only be educated south of the Liffey/Shannon line? We are long overdue more university places in the northwest.

There has been historic under-investment in university education in the northwest, going back to the Lockwood report in the 1960s.

Figures from Northern and Western Regional Assembly shows the region received 28% less investment per under graduate than the national average over the last decade. A vet school at ATU, collaborating with Magee university medical school in Derry City, will be a success and provide for the top half of the island. By attracting Northern Ireland students to ATU, we can reinstate integrated veterinary education on the island.

From before partition, the Royal Veterinary College in Dublin educated vets for the entire 32 counties; in my day, a fifth of the class was always from the six counties, reflecting our shared history.

This cohort quietly diminished without discussion shortly after Trinity gave up its role in vet education in Ballsbridge.

Northern Ireland urgently needs a vet school, but its agriculture minister confirms they lack the funding. ATU will be the Connacht/Ulster vet school and fill that void. There were 9,140 students from the Republic studying at UK universities and 3,149 from the UK studying in the Republic’s universities in 2021 (source: higher education mobility research British Council Ireland).

A dozen or so northerners at ATU will be a pittance of an expense to carry, in relation to how we take advantage of their hospitality. The ATU vet school will be a great investment to benefit all Ireland’s food producers and animal health and welfare.