Mr. Michael Horgan:

If you do not mind, Chairman, I will respond to Deputy Byrne's questions first. In response to the question about excellence in education, the problem with excellence is that one cannot measure it. It is not a final point. It is like quality. It is a journey one is going on. To me, excellence is something one never achieves because one keeps working to improve things. If one looks at a quality improvement system, if one likes, one never gets to a stage where one says one is absolutely happy now that it has been reached. Excellence is a word that is thrown around all the time but one cannot measure it and say this is it. It is a perpetual road that one is on and one never arrives. One needs other ways to measure it. When one looks at the Irish education system, it provides all sorts of different services and outcomes in different ways, between the universities and colleges of further education, and in particular the institutes of technology. They are all involved in education and they all consider that they are doing excellent programmes but it is what is appropriate to the country that we should be looking at. We need an education system that suits the way the economy is going, the way the workforce is going, and the way trends are going in the sectors within the economy before we start to look at international rankings.

My view is that if international rankings improve because of what we are doing internally, that is great, but the idea of having international rankings as a strategic objective now is unsustainable. The word "unsustainable" keeps being used. There is a report by the World Bank on achieving world status in university rankings and the No. 1 factor in that regard is funding. It is said that funding alone will not get one there but without funding all the other things that one needs will not be in place to get one there. Therefore, one needs funding. Last year €1.1 billion was spent on third level education. That is probably equivalent to the total budget of a relatively small college in the United States. Without the kind of funding that is required, in order to go up the rankings one would need significant investment at this stage. If we discovered oil off Kerry and suddenly we had loads of money coming in, of course one would do that but where we are at the moment, we need to get what we have working optimally and then look again at the situation. If the rankings improve because of what we are doing well internally, that is great.

Technological universities originally came from the Colm McCarthy report. That is probably where the idea came from but there is also the idea of having clusters. From the HEA’s point of view, it is a political policy so it is something that, if one likes, is handed over to us to progress. In terms of whether it is a good thing or a bad thing, my personal opinion is that it is a good thing. I do not see why there should be a difference in the qualification of those who graduate from institutes that are grouped together and are providing programmes that are approved by Quality and Qualifications Ireland, QQI, and are accredited. I do not believe the qualification would be of a different standing or ranking. Personally, I do not have a problem with the policy.

I will now respond to the question on access.

It is about the culture of the institutions. If leadership does not filter down to all staff in the universities and institutes and access is not seen as a daily event in the work of an institution, it will not work. I have seen great examples of universities and colleges having superb access programmes to reach out and identify students in pre-third level education and work them through the system. It is most definitely a cultural issue within an organisation and it must be nurtured and grown. The way the HEA can improve access to increase the numbers is through the performance measures we agree with each of the universities and institutes. We are looking for access to be the front and centre in terms of performance. It means everything. It is not just for disadvantaged students; it is also for those who did not go to college full time and want to go back to get a degree. That is very close to my thinking. I know that it is already included in the objectives for the year, but it is something we must target to ensure we will be able to measure improvements in access to the colleges. Once it becomes a habit and part of every day life, it will work forever.

When Deputy Carol Nolan asked about research funding, did she mean funding for educational research separate from funding for any other purpose?