Despite a shortage of doctors in Canada, many good students are being refused admission to that country's medical schools and are flocking to Ireland's instead - so much so that the Canadian Medical Association's news and features editor, Pat Sullivan, calls Ireland the home of Canada's "17th medical school."

In an article in the Journal of the Canadian Medical Association, he says that more than 100 Canadians are currently enrolled in medicine at University College Dublin, University College Cork, Trinity College Dublin, and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. "They outnumber the first year students at nine of Canada's 16 medical schools, and their total is roughly double the size of the first year class at the University of Saskatchewan," he says.

Most are hoping that they will eventually be able to practise medicine in Canada but, as 28 year old Ilana Porzecanski, of Victoria, British Columbia, a fourth year medical student at University College Dublin, says: "If Canada doesn't want us, somebody else will." In fact, more than 700 of those with postgraduate training have received limited licences, which restrict the location or type of practice, or both.

The students are in Ireland thanks to the Atlantic Bridge Programme, created by Ireland's medical schools to attract North American students in the face of growing competition from those in the Caribbean and elsewhere. The number of applications from Canada matches the decline in the number of first year positions at Canadian schools. Peter Nealon, the programme's director, says that about 70 applications a year now come from Canada, and about half of these are accepted. Almost all the applicants have been rejected by Canadian schools. The Canadian Medical Forum, which includes the Canadian Medical Association, has called for an increase in the number of government funded training positions from the current level of 100 slots to 120 slots per 100 medical school graduates.

Canadian students studying in Ireland find that their biggest problem is high debt loads. They pay about three times more in tuition - about C$30 000 annually - than in the most expensive Canadian school, and they find the cost of living higher. Most find themselves paying C$45 000-50 000 a year altogether.

Mr Nealon says their best bet to find a place to practise is in the United States. For this the students need an internship as well, but once they have it, "it is relatively easy to land a residency position in the US because the country has about 22 000 residency slots but produces only 15 000 new doctors a year."