Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

This whole area comes under the remit of the Higher Education Authority in the first instance. The universities approached the Government to explain that their pension fund provisions were no longer adequate. I am speaking in general terms. When they merged their pension fund provision for university academics and staff into the Civil Service sector, in effect, they automatically came under the employment control framework, which the Government is operating in line with the terms and conditions of the troika agreement. There will be an employment control framework after that, as there always has been in the past. The figures in the current employment control framework were set by the troika, but when that comes to an end, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform will set our own framework which will be similar in principle. In that context we argued that the changes in high-level salaries for senior public servants should apply to the university sector as well. I am not in a position to update the committee on the progress that is being made in that regard. We are monitoring it.

I will comment briefly on the way in which universities spend their money. The tertiary sector is unlike the primary or secondary sectors because universities and institutes of technology raise money in varying degrees for ongoing programmes. Waterford Institute of Technology, for example, has a strong record of raising money. The question that arises in that context is whether they should be subject to control in the areas where they are raising additional moneys. Some of the benevolent bodies, such as the graduates' associations and the foundations of various colleges, have said they are prepared to give money to universities but do not necessarily want the Government to say how it should be spent. They feel that should be left to the discretion of the universities themselves. There is a fair argument to be made in that regard, as far as I am concerned.

I have been given a note to the effect that there has been a 12% reduction in the number of people employed in this sector on a full-time basis. The overall figure decreased from 19,900 to 17,600 between 2008 and 2013.

Members will have taken note of the announcement of the possible establishment of three technological universities and four regional clusters. These reform plans are all about achieving a better alignment of the public funding at our disposal so that we can streamline the system, create additional critical mass and gear the system towards the kind of performances and outcomes we need. If we were starting from scratch today, we would not create 14 regional technical colleges, or institutes of technology as they are now known. We are looking at how best to reconfigure that structure. As a first step, we invited colleges and institutes of education in that sector to indicate where they thought they should or would be, or where they would like to be, within the framework of the Hunt report. Submissions regarding their aspirations were received by the Higher Education Authority, which examined them and decided to reconcile conflicting aspirations - there were cases of double and triple counting - by recommending an infrastructure for the institutes of technology landscape, with which we are familiar. In effect, there will be a Connacht-Ulster alliance between Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, the Institute of Technology Sligo and Letterkenny Institute of Technology. The proposed Dublin configuration or merger, involving an alliance between Dublin Institute of Technology, Blanchardstown Institute of Technology and the Institute of Technology Tallaght, is proposing to apply for technological university status. I will come back to that in a moment. Details of the other configurations are available if Deputies want to discuss them.

The outline has been recommended back to the sector. They have been told, in respect of mergers, clusters or applications to proceed to technological university status, that they will have to come forward with a development working plan by the end of this calendar year. Based on an assessment of the feasibility of that plan, with the assistance of external international experts, they will proceed to the next stage. That is the change. The relationship between a university and an institute of technology will be part and parcel of that. For example, a structured relationship between Athlone Institute of Technology and NUI Maynooth has been proposed. The same thing applies in the case of Dublin City University and Dundalk. That would allow students to carry their learning qualifications from Athlone Institute of Technology, for example, to NUI Maynooth if they wanted to proceed to level 9 or level 10 of their course of study.