‘I’d guess I was saving €25,000 or €30,000 a year studying in Warsaw rather than Dublin’

Paddy Thompson was up a ladder in a nursing home, paintbrush in hand, when he first heard about the Warsaw University of Life Sciences.

Having missed out on qualification for veterinary medicine in UCD, the Limerick man did a degree in zoology in UCC. He was never quite able to shake the urge to become a vet.

The only information available about studying in Eastern Europe came through word of mouth.

“I was doing a summer job, painting in a nursing home, and I met a girl who was studying veterinary in Slovakia,” he said. “Through her I got talking to a few people who were studying in Warsaw and I decided that I would give it a gamble.

“It was a bit daunting in the beginning. I was only after doing a primary degree and was being funded by my parents. I applied to Budapest as well as Warsaw, and when I looked into it, Poland was such a cheaper country to live in.”

Paddy was in his early 20s when he went to Poland but many Irish teenagers are going abroad to study.

“I was more mature. I don’t think I could have studied in Warsaw as an 18-year-old. I wasn’t mentally mature enough for it,” he says.

“I remember arriving on a train at 5.30am, not knowing anybody. It was daunting.

“There was five or six [Irish] in the year ahead of me. Once I got chatting to them and recognised my own I got more comfortable.

“We formed a family away from home. We set up a GAA club and the year revolved around playing tournaments across Europe. ”

One of the biggest attractions of the European colleges is the cost of living.

“I’d guess I was saving €25,000 or €30,000 a year studying in Warsaw,” says Paddy. “You are sacrificing the comforts of home and being able to go home on the weekend but it was worth it.

“It is crazy how many Irish people are studying veterinary abroad now, and it all started by word of mouth. It just took a few people who were willing to take a chance and it grew from there. There was five or six in my year in Warsaw and it seems to be growing all the time.”

Paddy grew up on a farm

Paddy Thompson says, ‘We formed a family away from home in Warsaw. We set up a GAA club’

in Limerick with a mixture of suckler cattle, horses and sheep. He now works at the

Blackwater Veterinary Clinic in Mallow, with “a very mixed practice”.