Vet Applications Rose 82 Per Cent and Physio 27 Per Cent, So Why Did Their Points Fall?

This is the most counter-intuitive result in the whole 2026 CAO table, and it has a very good explanation.

The demand numbers were extraordinary. On the final application figures, first preferences for veterinary medicine rose 82%, physiotherapy 27% and medicine 22%. On the earlier February snapshot, pharmacy applications were up 41%, and health courses had attracted about 16,900 first preferences at degree level, far ahead of business (around 9,500) and arts (around 7,600).

Every rule of thumb says those cut-offs should have gone through the roof. Several of them went down.

What actually happened

*UCD Veterinary is scored on Leaving Cert points combined with an additional assessment.

The answer is new supply

2026 was an unusually big year for new health provision entering the CAO system. Five genuinely new health programmes opened and a sixth appeared in Round 1 for the first time, and they landed exactly where the demand surge was:

• ATU Letterkenny, Veterinary Medicine and Surgery (AU375), entering at 647 on a combined scale
• SETU Waterford, Veterinary Medicine (SE526), entering at 566
• SETU Waterford, Pharmacy (SE525), entering at 544
• University of Limerick, Medicine, undergraduate entry (LM301), entering at 730
• University of Limerick, Speech and Language Therapy (LM106), entering at 544
• ATU Letterkenny, Physiotherapy (AU374), which made no Round 1 offers at all last year, entering the Round 1 table this time at 532

For decades, UCD was the only route to veterinary medicine in Ireland, and a generation of students was told the points were simply out of reach. Two new providers opened this year. Three of the highest-demand health disciplines in the country got new capacity in the same admissions cycle, and the established programmes absorbed less of the surge than they otherwise would have.

Demand went up. Supply went up faster in the places that mattered. That is the whole story.

Health overall still rose, sharply

Don't mistake this for a soft year in health. Across 115 health courses, points rose by an average of 12.5, more than double the national average. The rises were concentrated in nursing, allied health and technician-level programmes:

General Nursing rose almost everywhere: ATU Letterkenny +32, TUS Athlone +30, DkIT +22, UL +21, DCU +16, ATU Sligo +13, UCC +11, Galway +10, MTU Kerry +10.

Dentistry went the other way from pharmacy: UCC Dentistry rose 12 points to hit the maximum 625, joining Trinity Dental Science at 625, with RCSI Dentistry unchanged at 613.

Medicine barely moved at all

Despite a 22% application surge, undergraduate medicine was remarkably static:

That stability is the HPAT doing its job. Because entry combines the HPAT score with Leaving Cert points, the competition sits on a much wider scale than 625, and the extra applicants distributed across it rather than pushing a single cut-off upward. UL's new programme entering at 730, level with Galway in year one, also took genuine pressure off the existing five.

What this means if you want health

If you missed physio, pharmacy or vet by a small margin this year, your position is better than it looks. New programmes in their first year of operation are the most likely of any course type to move in later rounds, because colleges are estimating acceptance rates without historical data. Last year, 215 courses dropped points after Round 1, with a median fall of 10 points.

If you're in Fifth Year, the map has changed. Veterinary medicine is no longer a single 589-point door in Dublin. Pharmacy is no longer three universities. Any advice you were given before this year about health course access is now partly out of date.

And if you're choosing between nursing disciplines, note that intellectual disability nursing and mental health nursing rose the fastest of any nursing strand this year, 50+ points at Trinity and DCU. The perception that these are the "easier" nursing routes is now a year out of date.

Health courses have the most complicated entry landscape in the CAO, and it just changed. CourseCompass tracks all ~850 Irish courses, including every new programme, and shows you realistic routes based on your actual results. Start with the free CAO points calculator.

Data and verification. 2026 points are the Central Applications Office's own Round 1 lists for Level 8 and Level 7/6 courses (retrieved 26 August 2026, checksum-verified on two separate downloads). 2025 points are the CAO's published 2025 points charts. All 1,395 courses in the 2026 lists are covered, plus 42 courses listed in 2025 that are not offered this year. Every figure quoted in this article was machine-checked against that dataset. Sampled 2026 and 2025 values were independently confirmed against the entry-points lists published by Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin and University of Galway, 42 of 42 matched. Year-on-year change is calculated only where a course was scored on the same basis in both years.