Mr. Tom Boland:

I will try to be brief but cover the points. On NUI Galway and equality, the university has received particular publicity in recent weeks. Regrettably, it is not unique in terms of the relationship between the proportion of female academics and female professors. Ireland is not unique, unfortunately, and there are a wide range of issues.

Tomorrow will mark an important event. The Minister for Education and Skills will launch the Athena SWAN charter. All seven universities and 14 institutes of technology have signed up to it. It is a self-enforcing system whereby institutions commit themselves to the principles of the charter, which concern gender equality and are currently focused on science and mathematics, and submit themselves, initially on a school basis and ultimately on an institutional basis, to international peer review of how they are performing. The results are published accordingly.

I will not go into it in detail now but they have a system of bronze, silver and gold medals for both schools and institutions. The value of that is that, first, it will give an impetus to the issue of equality; it will allow sharing of best practice and; for the institutes and universities that have committed to it - all of them have - it will mean that there will be a way of assessing their progress over time.

At the same time, and in this context also, the HEA is considering whether it would be an appropriate time for us to conduct a wide-ranging review of equality policies and how they are being implemented across the sector. We have the power to do that. One of the things I would like to consider with the board in the context of the Athena SWAN process, which has a strong review element in it as well, is how we would meld those two processes together. It is a live issue in the HEA and in the Department. If members have an opportunity they can watch that space tomorrow in the course of the launch of the Athena SWAN charter.

On the Irish language, as a matter of statute the institutions have a responsibility to promote the Irish language. While we have just spoken in somewhat negative terms about NUI Galway, of course it does very positive things, in particular in the area of the Irish language. The HEA does not have a specific programme in this regard.