Achieving 605 CAO points in your Leaving Certificate does not necessarily mean you'll get the best practitioner, retired vet and member of the working group for the new veterinary school Ian Fleming told the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture on Wednesday evening.

What is needed, he said, is people with the practical ability of being a vet, suggesting aptitude tests as a possible solution to this.

He described the requirement of 605 points to get into veterinary in UCD as "astronomical stuff".

"If you lower the academic bar, obviously you can't go too low, but in my view 600 [sic] points doesn't mean you've got the best practitioner at the end of the day," he said.

Liam Moriarty, also a member of the working group, told the committee that, in general, the majority of people who get into veterinary "genuinely do" want to be a vet.

Urban schools

However, the issue is that, generally, the cohort of students who achieve high points are more often than not from urban schools rather than rural schools.

"I think in first year in UCD this year, 80% of them are female.

"Their intent going in is to be in companion animal practice or equine practice more so than rural, as a generalisation.

"I think we would welcome an alternative system as well. There's a graduate entry programme, there are other criteria that you can look at as well.

"There's going to be a bar required to get in that is still going to be academically very high, regardless of what you do, because it is still academically a really tough course to complete, but it doesn't need to be as high as it is," he said.

Intake

He argued that other criteria on intake need to be looked at.

He suggested that students should be asked what they intend to do at the end of it.

"If everybody who comes says 'I would like to specialise in small animal surgery', we know in 10 years time we are going to have loads of small animal surgeons and not enough cattle [vets]. We need to look at why people are going in," he added.