Diane Dodds says medical school development is good for Derry and will help meet health recruitment needs

She said the development of the Graduate Entry Medcial School (GEMS) at Magee would help the local health service meet ongoing recruitment challenges.

She was asked about the development by Foyle MLA Sinead McLaughlin at a meeting of the Stormont Economy Committee.

"It would be remiss of me not to thank you regarding the Executive announcement regarding Magee," said Mrs. McLaughlin.

"There is work to be done but there is an imminent deadline and obviously the first intake of students is September 2021, according to the announcement so we are delighted by that and the whole city is definitely celebrating that good news story and hopefully whatever work has to be done in the next couple of weeks everything will go through," said the local SDLP MLA.

Mrs. Dodds replied: "The announcement on the Magee medical school was a good announcement for the Executive to make, a good announcement for the city, and more importantly a good announcement for the whole of Northern Ireland.

"It is quite clear that we need more doctors and we want more of our young people to be able to train and retrain.

"I'm not pretending that the path ahead is easy. There is a significant amount of work to do in relation to the issues around capacity of Ulster university and the financial position of Ulster University and there is a significant amount of work to do about that but we have set ourselves on a pathway and we are working quite hard on that and there will be further papers to the Executive on that in due course."