Public health medicine is an area of expansion. "Ireland has invested heavily in public health medicine over the past five years," says TCD's professor of general practice, Dr Tom O'Dowd. "Most healthboards now have public health doctors. The Eastern Health Board has a director of public health and 10 consultants." Within public health, consultants may specialise - in child health or drugs and HIV for example.

It's an area of medicine which people usually opt for after they've done training in other areas - general practice or paediatrics, for example. To become a member of the faculty of public health medicine, you have to undertake a training programme and do two exams. "It's an interesting career and involves a lot of detective work," says O'Dowd. "You could be tracing the source of an outbreak of food poisoning or examining the causes of a Downs' Syndrome cluster in a particular area."

Meanwhile, finding work as a GP is becoming increasingly difficult. "Nowadays, people don't usually qualify and put up their plates," he says. "They join existing practices, which can be difficult to find." Young doctors who have qualified in general practice can apply for General Medical Services (GMS) posts, which allow them to treat medical card holders, who represent about 40 per cent of the patient population. "This gives you an automatic panel of a few hundred patients and you can often link in with an existing practice," he says.