Editorial View: Medicine course places decided by lottery despite GP shortage

This year, yet again, we are told that students who receive the maximum number of points in their Leaving Cert may not get their first choice of third level course. 

Places in high points courses such as Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and some fields of Engineering are being decided by lottery. 

It is hard to fathom how utterly devastating this must be for a young person who has worked their socks off to achieve top grades in every subject, whose family has been through all the challenges, financial burden and stress of securing student accommodation.

In a wider context, we have GP shortages in communities all over the country. We are hearing stories of pregnant women unable to get referred to a consultant because they can’t get registered with a GP here in Donegal. We have people waiting weeks for GP appointments, we have a dire shortage of consultants in specialist fields in our hospitals, leading to seemingly endless waiting lists. Only this week, we heard of non-elective surgery being cancelled - again - due to a shortage of beds. As a result, we have people becoming seriously ill or living in terrible pain that could have been avoided with earlier intervention, if only they could have been seen and assessed sooner. 

Yet rather than increasing the number of places on Medicine courses to help meet this demand, we have a situation where our very brightest, hardest working young people have no choice but to go abroad to fulfil their dream of becoming doctors. The knock-on effect of this is that they are then entering the workforce abroad, often through partnership arrangements with universities and training hospitals.

This is just one example of the flaws in a system that was devised when a relatively small percentage of people went to university. 

Yes, a certain number of students will have secured their first choice of course and will have arrangements made for accommodation. 

But many more will be looking at totally revising their plans, cancelling accommodation in one town or city and desperately trying to find a place to live in another - all in the space of a week or two.  

A major overhaul of the CAO system is urgently needed if we are to educate people to fill necessary roles in our society, and if we are to get rid of the stress of last minute, frantic and all too often fruitless searches for student accommodation.