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

Deputy McConalogue has been obliged to leave but I am sure he will consult the transcript in due course to follow up on the replies I am about to provide. Three Education Council meetings are held every year. Two of these take place in the first semester, so those hosted by Ireland were held in February and May. The final one takes place in November and that is the one to which I referred in my opening contribution.

I understood Deputy McConalogue's question on internationalisation to relate to Irish students travelling abroad. That was my interpretation about what he had to say. In yesterday's edition of The Irish Times, the education supplement - which is quite accurate in my experience - referred to a trade fair held in the RDS on opportunities to study abroad in Europe, including in parts of the United Kingdom. I have attended this event, which is expanding rapidly, for the past three years. An indication of its growth is that it has had to be held at a larger venue each year. Traditionally, people who wanted to pursue the course in physiotherapy for which a high number of points are required and who did not achieve these travelled to Maastricht or Utrecht to pursue courses in physiotherapy. The fee involved is €1,800. The rules in respect of domestic fees are that all students from EU member states pay whatever is the going rate in the country in which they intend to study. The amount which applies here is currently €2,500, in Britain it is £9,000 and in Northern Ireland it is approximately £4,500. All EU students are treated as being the same. In the region of 1,500 courses are available in different universities in countries such as France, Spain, Hungary, parts of the Netherlands and Germany, and these are all thought through the English language.

I met an Irish woman at the trade fair to which I refer who originally studied at Trinity College, who has been living in the Netherlands for some time and who is now a representative for a particular university there. I asked her why the university is seeking Irish students and she informed me that there are many continental students who want to study in English but whose first language is not English. She also stated that the university wants them to become used to the English vernacular. She indicated that while students from England and North America attend the university, her experience - rather than any bias - has been that Irish students are an attractive addition to the campus. She characterised the Irish students as being the social glue of the university. This is because they will mix with anyone and do not have hang-ups about particular nationalities which others appear to harbour. She informed me that others tend to cluster around the Irish and like to have them in the vicinity.

To the best of my knowledge, we do not keep a register of the Irish students who travel abroad. For example, the so-called league tables the newspapers publish at the appropriate time in respect of the number of students post-primary schools send on to university only capture data relating to Irish universities. The newspapers ask the seven universities and the institutes of technology to indicate the number of students they take on in first year and the schools from which they came. A small and very bright cohort of Irish students attend university in Oxford or Cambridge. These individuals do not feature on the league tables to which I refer. As a result, we do not have centralised information in respect of this matter. If it existed anywhere, it would be in the control of the Higher Education Authority.

On the other hand, we have a great deal of information in respect of incoming students. Senator Moran referred to this matter. In the first instance, the value of this business - and it is a business - if €1 billion.