Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

What latitude is there for further such funding? I will ask the question bluntly. Was the sector, with the decline in Exchequer funding, forced to be innovative in seeking out and securing such non-Exchequer funding, from where did it come and is there more funding in that space? How good are we at looking at the tradition of other universities, particularly in the United States, of going back to the alumni to see can they make some sort of contribution?

Ireland earns €1 billion per annum from international education, the vast majority of which goes into the sector. Have we fully exploited that? Some universities are especially adept at securing investment through international education and have done extraordinarily well in the past number of years. How can we encourage a best-practice approach across the sector, learning from the wonderful examples that are emanating from some universities and, indeed, some excellent institutes of technology? How can we take that learning and apply it across the system?

Finally, and this is something of a hobbyhorse of mine, what opportunity is there in the future to use technology to deliver learning and education, not alone here in Ireland but globally, particularly in emerging economies on the African Continent? There are some governments, for instance, Zambia, through the World Bank, investing significant amounts in further education and third level education, looking at best practice internationally and, essentially, seeking out providers of such education, and Zambia is looking at technology as being one of the conduits through which that education can be delivered. Is there any opportunity for us there?

We have an exceptionally strong brand abroad, and an especially strong reputation, as the land of saints and scholars and with the tradition that has grown down through the centuries. Other countries, such as New Zealand, are doing extraordinarily well with a multiple of our output in international education, and yet I would argue that such tradition has been built up over the past 20 or 30 years. We have a far older and far stronger tradition or, if one wants to call it that, brand. How do we fully benefit from that in the future?