The Institute of Guidance Counsellors has called on medical schools to cut the number of non-EU students enrolled.
However, Prof Tom O'Dowd of Trinity College Dublin has countered that without non-EU students, Irish medical schools would not be able to survive financially. Prof O'Dowd also said that without massive investment, it would be impossible to implement Minister for Education Mr Dempsey's plans to reform medical education.
Prof O'Dowd supports Mr Dempsey's approach because, among other reasons, the high points now required for medical school mean that boys are being excluded from the career.
Mr Dempsey announced his plans for reform on the day the CAO results were announced, in reaction to outrage from many parents and students. Students with as many as 565 points did not have enough to be accepted on to a medical course.
The Institute of Guidance Counsellors believes that limiting places for EU students by allowing too many non-EU students into medical school is a major reason behind the high points required. It said yesterday that it "deplores the practice of retaining such a high percentage of course places for non-EU candidates".
Prof O'Dowd said that non-EU students subsidise EU students by paying about €25,000 a year for tuition. Medical colleges receive €7,000 for each EU student from the Government. This compares to the €46,000 a student paid in Northern Ireland. About 50 per cent of medical students in State universities are non-EU, compared to up to 80 per cent at the private Royal College of Surgeons. Giving up as few as 15 non-EU students would cost TCD €300,000 a year, money it can ill afford to lose, said Prof O'Dowd.
According to the professor, the high points required for medical school favour girls, who achieve better Leaving Cert results. Eighty per cent of TCD's intake is now female. These young women tend to be passive, rather than challenging and questioning, said Prof O'Dowd. He would prefer to see a US model where a wide range of students with degrees from varied academic disciplines entered medical school at post-graduate level. Doctors need to be educated in philosophy and ethics as much as in the sciences. They also need to be mature before taking on the commitment of a medical education.
The original system proposed to the Points Commission was a two-year life sciences course, from which future medical students would be chosen. However, Prof O'Dowd would prefer to see students complete a four-year degree before medical school.