Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Like the Chairman, I welcome our visitors and very much welcome their presentation, which was good and concise and shows the potential for co-operation on an all-island basis. I welcome the recommendation for a North-South higher education joint working group. It is a proposal that we should be willing to vigorously support and pursue with the Higher Education Authority and the Minister for Education and Skills. I will add one particular bullet point for consideration - a proposal that we optimise existing capacity, to which Mr. Hannigan referred earlier in the presentation, and minimise course provision in the case of courses in niche areas with small numbers of students. There is no point in having a particular course in both the North and the South when it does not have a critical mass of students pursuing it. Given the challenging financial circumstances facing administrations North and South, we must optimise existing capacity.

One of my bugbears is the fact that we have good infrastructure, such as the different facilities in institutes of higher education and universities, lying idle for substantial parts of the year. We should be trying to derive benefit from this area on an year-round basis rather than on the basis of the academic year.

I warmly welcome the fact that the three institutes of technology in the Border area are working together. The witnesses mentioned that the Good Friday agreement had only a passing reference to education. Teagasc, which is an educational research institute authority here, has a close working relationship with its counterpart north of the Border, as have the two Departments. There is a lot of co-operation that is not specified or prescribed in formal agreements, but the Good Friday agreement was the backdrop to much of the increased co-operation between those institutions. Obviously, it is an area that needs to built upon. Representing two of the southern Border counties, we must be more outgoing and stronger advocates for Border regional development. If we do not utilise and maximise the potential of our third-level sector, we will not maximise the potential of our economies, North or South.