For a North American, you are unlikely to be in a situation where you could not take out loans to go to Ireland. When you have your acceptance letter to Ireland, that is a ticket to either the Staffords in USA, or a combo of Canada/provincial loans + the bank loans. Yes you carry a debt burden, but there isn't a denial of access to anyone, since pretty much all can take out loans once they are accepted. In reality, the financial-based denial occurs earlier in life: a candidate didn't get good grades in high school/undergrad since had to work to help the family, etc. This is not specific to Ireland, but with all schools, and all competitive high level training spots. Though there is a letter, in the application, where you can write about your life and why you didn't get good grades because of your social circumstances.
For the Atlantic Bridge program, this just makes sense. For the UCD college, there is one person, paid full time for the international students, who just deals with international forms, letters, etc for all 180000 students, because they are familar with the stuff and can do it more efficiently than each department doing the forms. Similarly, better just to pool the 4 Ireland schools that accept North Americans and hire a shared staff to do the paperwork and phones and background checks. It is largely phone/fax/post based, so it might as well be in USA so that the time difference hours are more reasonable and the cost overhead less for calls/post. 75$ per school (or whatever it is) is more than reasonable, especially considering the amount of service that you get for that amount--not every place can you call up and actually talk to the real person about your application and how it is going.
There is a need for diversity in Ireland. The population is about 95% Caucasian and Roman Catholic. This, in my opinion is one of the biggest drawbacks of Ireland in my opinion, because of the recent rise in racial intolerance over the last five years. Ireland needs a bit of diversity, and the best way is having people in your class from different cultures/religions and see that they are very nice people. Neither Canada nor USA is homogeneous, so out of a selection of about 10 students, some of those will be Asian, some will be African American, some East Indian, some Muslin, some Hindu, some Jewish, so yes it brings in a slice of diversity to the crowd. The university is usually the tower of tolerance usually (most of the fulminant racism is found in the lower socio-economic strata), but still it helps to have a bit of a rainbow in every workplace, especially during the educational years.
With regard to tuition, I think it is 100% fair for a non-citizen to pay a full tuition price. It is insanely difficult for an Irish student to get the academic points on their leaving certificate to go to medical school, and I don't think that parents would find much comfort in other families' children from other countries could train for free in Ireland at their taxpayer expense (all schools execept RCSI are not-for-profit government institutions). The tuition increase rate is set by the government, and has pretty much matched inflation when averaged over the years. It was actually a decrease of 30% on the tuition if you are from US/Canada, since the Irish punt was so strong, but when it was tied to the Euro, the Euro went down by a third or so. The tuition is in the low-to-middle price range compared to USA. I don't think I got my money's worth really in the first 2 years, but certainly more than my money's worth in the remaining years, so it somewhat balanced out.
On a government scale, the tuition from a few medical students at the government universities is a drop in the pail vs. the amount of tax revenue brought in by one multinational company like Citibank or Microsoft. The government focus is to fill the coffers by attracting multinationals (usually in the tech realm, since it exports well when on an island). The way to attract them is with a good infrastructure and a well-educated workforce. The government invested heavily in their universities, and the gambit payed off well, as their coffers are full and the economy strong.
In Ireland the medical educational system is that you are guaranteed your job as soon as you are accepted if you are Irish (and likewise if you are from the EU, since by law, all EU students must have the same rules for both native EU-member students and the other EU students). It is a small island, and there is only so many physician jobs that are needed (even less so, since so many Irish abroad want to come back and work in Ireland). However, there is alot more students that can be trained, vs. how many EU students can be guaranteed a job in Ireland, so the college can allow some international students from outside the EU to train also.
So who to look at for students? The course is only taught in English. Canada and USA have the very strong fringe benefit that they will return to Canada/USA, and then become good ties between the schools, since many Irish specialists do a fellowship abroad in Canada/USA . There is a saying that Ireland is closer to Boston that to Berlin, and it is true because of the shared language (not much of Europe is English-speaking), culture and family ties. When one looks at where Irish students are training, it is more often in the Irish hotspots (NY, Boston, Chicago, Newfoundland, etc), since there is alot of Irish doctors that have been there before, so they know what they are getting when they hire a new one.
For the rest of the world, the medical profession has a good social conscience, so they do give a hand-up to the less able countries [there was a time when Ireland was not rich but was given a handup by the EU and is now the strongest economy in Europe]. There is not a large army in Ireland (though they did sent troops to East Timor to help the East Timorese in their quest for independence) and they are neutral anyways, so they can't help less-able countries with military, but they can help with education, since they do it well. So in Botswana, there are 4 full scholarships: the Botswana government holds an exam whoever gets the top 4 scores gets the full tuition for medical education in Ireland paid for by the Botswana government, so that they can return with their knowledge and improve the healthcare of Botswana (and eventually get a critical mass of trained doctors in Botswana so that the country can open its first medical school of its own, which will be more cost effective). Ditto for Malaysia: almost all the students are on full scholarship from their government, most do 50% in Ireland and 50% in Malaysia. In Malaysia, RCSI and UCD built a school there for them (Penang), since it is a better way to move to critical mass than the Botswana model.
Best wishes,
--roo
aww man, that sucks!
