Mr. Ned Costello:

I will take the questions in sequence and might pass over then to colleagues on specific aspects of them.

In response to Senator O'Donnell's starting point, it was difficult to strike the right balance on this.

As the Senator has put it, the picture is one of elation and depression simultaneously. What we have tried to show is that the system has come through the crisis in many respects fitter and stronger, which is in line with the Deputy's point regarding income. It has also done it by drawing on internal resources and drawing on a huge amount of dedication on the part of the staff in the system. Whether the student-staff ratios, which is the point to which I was speaking, is a sustainable position in the long term is a big question. The quality aspect is complex and, as Mr. Boland said last week, we will not see the position regarding that until it is gone and then it will be too late. That is a concern. Arising from the increase in student numbers and the decrease in staff numbers, there is less time available for the one-to-one element with students. That is an inevitable consequence of what has happened.

Senator O'Donnell mentioned the research issue. That arises but one has to examine where research in university fits in the round. There has been a very significant change in the make-up of Irish universities in the past 20 years, and in the past 15 years more particularly, where they have moved from being predominantly teaching institutions to being research and teaching institutions. That has been necessary because the world the universities serve now is much more innovative and dynamic.

An interesting aspect of the exporting sector in Ireland is that employment in that sector has tended to stay pretty much at around 350,000, but the companies that are part of that sector and that generate the 80% of our GDP, or whatever the percentage is, are completely different companies now from what they were 15 to 20 years ago. It is a completely different cohort of companies. Those companies and companies throughout the economy have much different expectations and universities need to respond to that. That is from where the impetus for research has come. On the one hand, it is to benefit companies directly because universities collaborate with companies on research. Furthermore, it is to make sure that teaching in universities is at the cutting edge of knowledge and that the people who are teaching are fully informed by research. It creates the issue of the balancing of research and teaching loads, to which the Senator rightly referred. That needs to be done through a workload allocation system whereby, to take the example of a school, the head of the school can ensure that there is an equitable workload across all staff and that some staff do more research and less teaching and some staff do more teaching and less research.

The final point on that aspect is the issue of postgraduate teaching. It can be questioned whether postgraduate education is education or research but, in reality, it is both. We heard about the increase in postgraduate numbers which has been a big part of the increase in income. Teaching and research are two sides of the same coin.