A serious shortage of qualified vets for pets and farm animals is facing the Irish veterinary industry, with some practices advertising for more than a year to fill positions.
Political representatives have been told “there is a crisis now” by a working group of vets campaigning for the urgent introduction of a veterinary science degree in at least one other Irish university.
University College Dublin (UCD) offers the only degree in veterinary science on the island of Ireland. There is huge demand annually for places with students needing 580 points or more to access the internationally renowned course. On average, UCD produces 80 graduates who join the Irish veterinary ranks every year.
It is estimated that up to 120 young Irish people – who do not meet those points requirements – travel abroad each year to study veterinary science at universities in the UK and in cities such as Warsaw in Poland and Budapest in Hungary.
The two pronged nature of the problem is understood by Kathy Enright, who travelled to Edinburgh to study veterinary science more than 12 years ago and later return to work in her native Limerick.
“I wanted to be a vet for as long as I remember but I was always going to be 100 points short,” she said.
Enright now owns Rockhall Vets, which has several successful practices across counties Limerick and Clare focusing on small animals. However, the vet shortage has also affected her business and she says has had to resort to using recruiters to find suitable candidates, particularly in the last 18 months.
The shortage is even more acute in rural areas. The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture heard in May that while 18 per cent of vets nationally were aged over 60, this increased to 22 per cent in rural counties with large farm animal populations such as Cork and Tipperary.
Hours and workload can be more intense in rural areas, which can make it harder to attract and retain staff. However, the service rural vets provide to farmers is vital and many in farm communities are fearful that a time will come when a vet will not be on hand to help with out-of-hours emergencies such as calving cows or injured animals.
It is a concern that farmer and vet Nick Cooke is familiar with, having left Ireland to pursue a veterinary degree in Warsaw.
“Only for the likes of me and my friends coming out of Warsaw and others coming out of Budapest there’d be a serious shortage of large animal vets on farms,” he says.
There were 50 people in his class in Warsaw, Cooke says, and almost half were Irish. His younger sister has moved to Warsaw to study veterinary science and has just completed her first year.
The concern over the ageing farm vet population was highlighted by Jimmy Quinn, director of the working group campaigning for an additional veterinary course, who says most of the vets aged in their 60s will have retired by 2030. He argues a new degree programme needs to be rolled out by 2025 at latest to provide 100 graduates to add to the workforce by the end of the decade.
His colleague, Ian Fleming, says there were up to 90 advertisements for vet positions in the leading Irish veterinary magazine every month.
Overall, the call for an additional veterinary degree has been welcomed. The Department of Further and Higher Education, overseen by Minister Simon Harris, has already begun work to assess which university would be best equipped to host the course.
Niamh Muldoon, chief executive and registrar of the Veterinary Council of Ireland, has also said the organisation would be pleased to apply veterinary credentials to a new degree.
“One in three vets on our register has qualified from a course outside of Ireland,” Muldoon told The Irish Times. “Without question there is a demand. For every single student that is allocated a place in UCD there is a demand from seven to eight students.”
There are three universities competing to roll out a new veterinary course, including the University of Limerick (UL), South East Technological University and Atlantic Technological University Sligo.
However, the view among some veterinary and political representatives is that the new school should be at UL.
“The reputation of the university will have to be paramount and UL already has an excellent track record,” says Fianna Fáil TD for Tipperary Jackie Cahill, who chairs the Oireachtas agriculture committee.
Cahill, a dairy farmer, believes the practical training young vets receive will be vital to ensuring a continuity of large animal vets for farms and says the links that UL could forge with local agricultural colleges would be beneficial.
Others within the veterinary industry point to different issues. Conor Geraghty, former president of Veterinary Ireland and owner of the FarmGate practice in Galway, says staff retention is a huge issue for the industry.
“The average length of time that people stay in practice is seven years,” he says. “This is roughly the same for vets in New Zealand and the UK as well. It’s not unique to Ireland.”
Geraghty notes that working in or owning a veterinary practice can be stressful, and that some vets prefer a more straightforward option such as taking up a role in a State operation or an animal pharmaceutical company.
“A new veterinary school addresses the supply but not the retention issue facing the industry, but it’s a welcome and much needed first step,” he says.
Case study: ‘Thank God my career guidance teacher helped me, otherwise I might not be a vet today’
Hazell Mullins always dreamt of becoming a vet as a child, but feared the opportunity would be out of reach in the Irish school system given she struggled with languages.
Securing a spot on the only veterinary course on offer in the State demanded high points, so she feared she might miss out.
“My grades in languages just weren’t as good as my grades in math and the sciences,” she says.“Veterinary was always my number one choice in school but the Irish school system meant I didn’t think I’d be able to get into UCD to study veterinary.”
Mullins credits her career guidance teacher with finding a path for her to study veterinary at the University of Nottingham in England.
“Thank God my career guidance teacher helped me, otherwise I might not be a vet today,” she says. “She helped me with the English UCAS system. I did an interview in Nottingham and secured a place. I still had to get As in the sciences in the Leaving Certificate but six years later I graduated as a vet.”
Mullins is now part of a working group of vets campaigning for at least one other Irish university to start offering a degree in veterinary. She feels that young people who would make excellent vets are being let down under the system.
“I didn’t get the points for UCD but still got a first in my UK veterinary degree in Nottingham,” she says.
