John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

With a significant issue such as this and given the fact that the Higher Education Authority, HEA, and the Department of Education and Skills must be answered to, as funding from the Department via the HEA is being received by the institute, would the institute not have asked whether they had a mechanism that cost less than €1,500 per day? They - or someone else - are responsible for quality assurance. For example, would the institute not have engaged with the agency mentioned by Mr. Ó Foghlú to determine the best route to take in this situation? It seems that the institute took this course to protect the college's reputation. It would have been much cheaper to take its own advice, namely, one act of plagiarism does not a bad college make. The institute seems to have spent €400,000 plus only to buy itself bad publicity.