Dr. Stephen Farry:

I thank the Chairman for his kind welcome and the invitation to come here this afternoon to address the committee. I hope that my presentation is illuminating. I appreciate that the committee members are very tired so I hope that I do not send them back to sleep. We welcome the opportunity to raise these issues and to explore them.

I will make a few general opening comments and set out some of the issues that are on the landscape, and hope that we have a good exchange through questions and answers and further exploration of some of these issues. The central message I am keen to get across today is that while there is a degree of co-operation and collaboration in further and higher education on the island of Ireland it is significantly below its potential. There is significant capacity for growth in terms of student flows in both directions and in the development of research. I had planned to speak primarily about higher and further education but towards the end, given the Chairman’s remarks, I will make a few brief comments on youth unemployment which is such a particularly acute issue for us all.

Last year in Northern Ireland we published our first ever higher education strategy, entitled Graduating to Success. One of the projects in that strategy is to facilitate greater cross-Border collaboration and student mobility. I would like to think that by the end of 2013 we will have identified targets in conjunction with our higher education institutions for greater expansion of North-South co-operation and we should be looking to meet many of those targets by the end of this decade. I am also pleased to say that Tom Boland from the Higher Education Authority in the South is part of that project team so there is already on-going engagement with Government officials here in that regard.

The context in which we work is partially set by the report published by IBEC and CBI in 2011, A Study of Obstacles to Cross-Border Undergraduate Education. This was discussed in an Assembly debate in October 2012 and at that stage the Assembly agreed to take forward the recommendations in that report. There are probably four out of the nine recommendations that are particularly relevant to our discussions, one relates to the quality of information available to students and we are addressing that under the higher education strategy. Another relates to student support for students domiciled in Northern Ireland who may be studying in the Republic of Ireland. From 2013-14 on there will be a new form of student support which hopefully will address some of the anomalies highlighted in that report and better facilitate students from Northern Ireland studying in the Republic of Ireland.

Another issue, which is perhaps the most thorny in the short term, relates to an issue around the recognition of A level qualifications and equivalency for university entry into institutions in the Republic of Ireland. My colleague, John O’Dowd, has commissioned a report in conjunction with the Irish Universities Association and the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment in Northern Ireland.

It is expected to be made available to both governments and the Irish university presidents during the coming months. The final relevant recommendation for our own Department relates to research into higher education student flows and I will return to that topic in a few moments.

Other initiatives should be noted. We support Universities Ireland, which has been established by nine universities across the island. It receives funding of £25,000 from both jurisdictions for the Centre for Cross-Border Studies, which provides secretariat support. The undergraduate awards have been in place since 2008. Both governments co-administer the McManus all-Ireland scholarship scheme which is funded by J. P. McManus. This scheme supports our own Department's widening access strategy.

The US-Ireland research and development partnership includes a number of eligible areas such as nanotechnology, sensor technology, energy and sustainability, telecommunications and health. To date, 12 projects have been supported. It is worth noting that President Obama addressed an audience in Belfast on 17 June 2013 and he chose to highlight that partnership in particular and more broadly he indicated the opportunities that exist for research and collaboration. I am very conscious that we are living in a more globalised age and this includes in the area of high-level research. There is a need to upscale of the size of research projects and as a consequence, greater collaboration is needed. Northern Ireland has high-achieving targets set under the Barroso task force and there is a need to improve the drawing down of competitive European funds. I refer to framework seven which deals with research and development and which in due course will become Horizon 2020. My Department and the Department for Enterprise, Trade and Investment have established a £1.8 million EU support fund which provides a network of Northern Ireland contact points for research applications. These will link closely with the national contact points in the Republic of Ireland through an all-island EU steering group. We look with a degree of admiration to the level of draw-down of those competitive funds within the Republic of Ireland and this serves as an example for us.

On the issue of further education, the flow of students is very much one-way traffic which is from the South to the North. This situation is particularly acute in the north west of the island. The North-West Regional College has over 3,000 students from the South. To a large extent this reflects the relative lack of capacity in vocational education and training courses in the County Donegal area. This can be contrasted with other Border areas where there is a much broader range of post-leaving certificate course provision or vocational colleges. That flow drops to approximately one fifth relative to the situation in the north west. The great distortion in the flow is very evident.

Given that we are in the European Union we fund and support students from the Republic of Ireland just as we do for students from any other part of the EU. In the short term, this may become a source of tension, given the funding implications for the Northern Administration. However, we are co-operating closely with our counterparts in the Department of Education and Skills. I raised the issue with my counterpart Minister, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, in November 2012, on the margins of the NSMC meeting. Officials from both our Departments have agreed to collect and examine the data with a view to providing a joint report. The terms of reference of that exercise are due to be agreed in September 2013. It will study both higher education and higher education flows.

Northern Ireland students only account for about 1% of the student population enrolled in HEA-supported institutions in this jurisdiction. By contrast, the number of Southern students in Northern Irish universities amounts to about 4.5%. This illustrates a significant imbalance. In the past a much higher percentage of Northern students opted to study in the South but for various reasons in the past number of decades there has been a significant falling-off. There are barriers around entry to universities and also a lack of information which need to be addressed. I suggest these issues could be explored in the question and answer session.

It was feared that a much different funding regime in Northern Ireland compared with the Republic of Ireland would create incentives which would further distort student flows. However, both jurisdictions have moved in a common direction around student support and charges to students which in my view will produce a fairly level playing field on the island which will be of assistance in due course.

While I am highlighting these distortions in flows and the current imbalances, it would be wrong for the committee to confine its discussion to what steps can be taken to correct those imbalances within the current quantum of student flows. I return to my opening comments that we see a potential for a much greater collaboration on student flows on the island. With a rising tide those distortions should be evened out without the issues becoming a major source of tension between the two jurisdictions in the medium term. I stress that in the short term there are issues which we need to explore together.

I will return to the issue of youth unemployment, which is a very thorny issue in Northern Ireland, as it is in the Republic of Ireland. We are conscious that this is an issue throughout the European Union. Our figures currently run at approximately 20% of young people actively seeking work and who are currently out of work. That is a major cost to our economy and also a cost in terms of wasted lives and opportunities. There is a real danger that the investment in people's skills will be lost as those skills become rusty. We also have very heavy concentrations of unemployment among young people. Our unemployment profile is heavily skewed. Almost one in three of those who are unemployed fall within the 18 to 24 age group. We have a number of schemes in place, as is the case in this jurisdiction, which attempt to address that issue. We place a very heavy focus on work experience opportunities because that is what the international community stresses as being the best way of addressing this problem. We are also conscious that the European Union, under the Irish Presidency, has in the past weeks put together a €6 billion fund to assist with youth unemployment. There may be differences in terms of the eligibility of our jurisdiction compared to this jurisdiction and this was raised by the Taoiseach at the North-South Ministerial Council last week. There is a commitment that officials from both jurisdictions will meet in September to explore the opportunities to take that initiative forward.

I am happy to answer questions. I will pass any difficult questions to Mr. Andrews or Ms Shaw.