Mr. Tom Boland:

Only yesterday I and the team from the HEA met representatives of all the institutions in the west cluster. That included the university in Galway, as well as the three institutes. We met individually and as a cluster. Overall, our impression is that in terms of the compact with the HEA, which includes merger activity, we can be positive that the institutions are moving in the right direction. There is a great deal of work to be done and many issues have been mentioned here, including geographical dispersal of institutions. There is an appetite for proceeding both with the merger and, ultimately, with an application for status as a technological university. That latter application will fall to be dealt with through the processing criteria for the creation of technological universities. There is good "mood music" in that regard.