Ending Bank of Ireland student doctor loan will 'remove access' to medical courses for many

The discontinuation of the Bank Of Ireland medical loan will remove “access for anyone who doesn’t have the financial means" to cover fees up front.

Future doctors say the ending of a popular loan used by many to finance their studies highlights the “glaring gap” in financial support for medicine students.

From July, Bank Of Ireland is to phase out a loan to new applicants it offers specifically to General Entry Medical (GEM) students, which many students use to fund the fees for the four-year accelerated course. As the programme is considered a "second-degree" course, students are not currently eligible for free fees or student grants. 

The loan offer lets students borrow up to €15,000 each year over a four-year period of study, at 6.5% APR. It includes a four-year moratorium on repayments, meaning that no repayments are collected for the first four years after students graduate. Many GEM students now find themselves “frantically filling out forms, obtaining guarantors and witnesses”, according to those who spoke to the Irish Examiner. 

“Fees are €15,000 to €16,500 per year depending on the university you are in,” one GEM student said. 

It means that anyone who doesn’t have that kind of money sitting in the bank will not be able to do the course, and that is a huge amount of people.

The discontinuation of the Bank Of Ireland loan will inadvertently remove “access for anyone who doesn’t have the financial means to cover that straight away off the bat.” 

Students can access other educational loans but need to be repaid immediately unlike the deferred repayments through the Bank of Ireland loan.

"We acknowledge that it’s not the bank’s responsibility to fund this course for people but what it really highlights is the lack of financial options and support for people who want to become doctors and work here. It’s going to reduce the number of people who are going to be available to avail of this course," the student added.

Ruairí Power, the student union president at University College Dublin, which runs one of the country’s four GEM programmes, said he has been contacted by worried current and prospective students. 

“The whole point of GEM was to diversify the medical field,” Mr Power said.

Diversity will be stunted

“We want people from diverse backgrounds to stay in medicine in the country and be able to progress with their studies here. If we are essentially saddling people with an insurmountable debt, and then removing the ability to actually gain the initial capital in the first instance, we are placing huge barriers in access in front of students who could essentially be blocked from studying GEM. 

“The loan facility in and of itself is an indictment of the excessively high fee barriers put in place in the first instance, arising out of the lack of sustainable Government funding for the higher education sector. It’s important that we have these loans in place for students in the immediate term, but we need to be having a conversation about the excessive charges in the long run as well.”

Bank of Ireland and the Department of Further Education have been contacted for comment.