Mr. John D'Arcy:

I thank members for their questions, which were focused and sharp. I will address Senator Power's issue on open access. Open University has always been an open access provider. That was its mandate when it was set up by Harold Wilson's Labour Government in the late 1960s. One of the reasons we are comfortable with this is that our higher education entrant differs from Professor MacCraith and others'. The average age of an Open University student in Ireland is approximately 30 years. These students want to enter higher education for a particular reason. They are motivated to learn. We also have excellent staff at Holles Street who will advise on people's suitability for specific courses. If we believe that someone needs additional help before starting a higher level course, we will refer him or her to other providers or some of our free learning. I liked Senator Craughwell's phrase "try it and see". We find that approach to be helpful for people who want to get a sense of whether they are ready for higher education with Open University. Quite often, we recommend one of our OpenLearn programmes or massive open online courses, MOOCs, so that people can get a feel for what might be expected of them on a learning journey with us.

Our success rate with Republic of Ireland students is our highest globally. One of the reasons is that they pay high fees. We do not have the level of teaching grant support in the Republic that we have in Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales. England has a different system for funding part-time higher education, under which our students take out loans. That is a barrier in itself.

The people coming through our doors to sign up for a course are highly motivated and have invested in a university course. It is one of the reasons they are the highest performing across our demographic.

The figure of 22% is for FutureLearn courses. The success and completion rates for traditional degree programmes are much higher.

Some members asked how we encouraged secondary learners and others into higher education through the use of open resources. We take a multichannel approach, a lot of which is based on our formative experience with the BBC. We use the BBC for programmes such as "Life Story" with Sir David Attenborourgh, which encourages people to think about science. At the end of the programme there is always a call to action, which could be through a free poster or free learning, that will make a percentage of viewers sit forward on their sofas and think about taking a course.

"Frozen Planet" delivered 600 new undergraduate students across the United Kingdom and Ireland to us. In EU terms, 600 students is a not a large figure, but it is a significant number to enrol for a science course. We use such programmes to entice people in and in the past few years we have used resources such as YouTube. Ours is the largest European university channel on YouTube. Professor Mac Craith referred to the "Google generation"; there is also the "YouTube generation". The most frequent searches on YouTube involve requests on how to do something. People are learning how to fit plugs and do scientific things. We are using it as a wraparound.

For engagement, we use Twitter and Facebook. When we get people through to OpenLearn, which is free, about 12% of those taking such courses will click through to our mainstream site. It is a very high figure in terms of those who are thinking about taking a particular course. A lot of this is tied with our mission. Ours is a charitable university; therefore, whatever we gain we plough back into our learning materials. That is why we can afford to share so much free material. We have a lot of material on Google Play and iTunes University is very populated - we have had 64 million downloads since it started.

It is not all motherhood and apple pie; we do things for a reason. We want to get people into higher education, which is part of the mission for which we were set up. Our mission is to empower people who would not normally have a chance to engage in higher education.

We do not have comments on the funding system because we are not funded by the State. We have done some work with Springboard and do some work within the prison sector, but we operate in the private college sector. Having said that, 2,500 citizens choose to come our way and we think that is because of the support we give. In Northern Ireland a national student survey has shown that ours has been the most popular university in terms of student satisfaction for ten years on the trot. In England I understand it is the fifth most popular choice. We are generally in the same position as Oxford and Cambridge universities.

As my colleagues said, online learning is not about pressing buttons; rather, it is about the people behind it who provide support. We have a fantastic body of associate lecturers across the island, from County Kerry to County Derry, who are available to help people to reach their study goals.