Graduate medical students are under huge pressure from fees, accommodation, travel expenses and the cost of living. They receive no SUSI grant, no Government supports and no access to loans. Their options are to drop out, to work 12-hour weekend shifts or to rely on parents for financial support. This is unfair, especially to students from rural communities where we urgently need to see more doctors. We must ease the financial pressure on graduate medical students. This can be done by extending the SUSI grant to graduate medicine students or by creating a fair loan scheme for them. We must support our future doctors.

I appreciate the points Deputy Aird made about graduate medicine and graduate entry. There are commitments in the programme for Government to examine the plight of mature entrants. It is important that we scale up the number of people in these professions. A new medical graduate-entry course will start in the University of Galway next year and a new pharmacy course will start this year. A new dentistry course will start in RCSI this year. Additionally, a new veterinary course will start in ATU and SETU next year. We are multiplying the number of professional places across all the universities. However, we are very conscious of the mature entry route, which is something I want to develop and see more of. I take the Deputy's point that the grants perhaps need to be extended further. An examination of that is taking place ahead of the budget. We will be in touch with the Deputy in due course.