Trinity College's School of Medicine, the country's oldest medical school, was today formally moved to the university's new Biomedical Sciences Institute on Pearse Street in Dublin.
The school, which pioneered medical education in Ireland in the 18th century, had been previously scattered across several buildings and annexes on the university's original campus.
The college's 1,250 undergraduate and postgraduate medical students will now be taught under the one roof for the first time.
Significantly, their tuition will take place in the same environment as some most advanced medical research in the country, affording students a first-hand experience of “the bench to bedside approach to research”.
Placing pre-clinical education in a “research-rich environment” was one of the key recommendations of the Buttimer and Fottrell reports on how medical education in Ireland should be overhauled.
The centre's teaching equipment includes teaching laboratories with the latest technologies, 300-seat lecture theatres, seminar rooms and a specially designed anatomy dissection room with audio video equipment facilities to enhance the learning experience.
Funding of just over €21 million was provided for the school by the Higher Education Authority and the Department of Education and Skills.
The €131 million institute, which was formally opened last June, brings together the university's five main research schools; medicine, biochemistry and immunology, pharmacy and pharmaceutical science, chemistry and bioengineering.
It also hosts three research centres looking at cancer drug discovery, immunology and medical device technologies.
While students have been attending classes in the new building since September, the school was officially opened this afternoon by Minister of State for Research and Innovation Seán Sherlock.
Mr Sherlock said housing medical students in multi-disciplinary research environment "would allow students relate what happens in the lab to the patient". He said the research taking pace at the institute was vital to the country's economic recovery.
The head of college's the School of Medicine, Prof Dermot Kelleher, said the quality of the environment for teaching and learning had been transformed by the new building's facilities.
"Despite all the economic doom and gloom, we have the capacity to do work here now that would not have been possible 10 years ago."
