Sir, – The resounding answer to Dr Alex Hartigan's question, "Isn't it time to expand the graduate entry medicine programmes and reduce places in traditional undergraduate medical degrees?" (Letters, September 29th) is a definite no. The proposed reduction in undergraduate medical degrees would further ensure that medicine is restricted to those young people whose parents have the financial capability to pay for the wildly expensive graduate-entry programmes. For those of us on modest wages, the only affordable option for our children is through the undergraduate route. My daughter decided what she wanted in post-primary school and she worked long and hard to pursue her long-held ambition to become a doctor. I can assure the doctor that there was no "snobbish parental pressure". I do agree with Dr Hartigan's sentiment that "we need to retain our own expensively trained medics". In my daughter's case, she answered "Ireland's call" and returned from Australia with many of her colleagues and, once the first crisis was over, her "Covid contract" was terminated in early July. It appears that the Irish medical system is not really interested in retaining her and many of her cohort. – Yours, etc,
KATHRYN CROWLEY,
Knocklyon,
Dublin 16.