Mr. Michael Horgan:

My term is five years. Regarding my achievements, in a first draft of my statement I put in what I thought I might do but I took them out. Education is a very big ship, and to turn it will take a long time in all sorts of ways. From my initial experience with the HEA, I would like to see the governance of the institutions change because, from what I have seen, I do not think they have governance that is fit for purpose in place. Many issues come back to the HEA, almost like a child to a parent, when the organisations should be dealing with them internally themselves. I would also like to see a greater emphasis on the area to which Senator Gallagher referred in one of his last questions, that is, lifelong learning and access to it. I would like to see that opened up much more, and I suspect that competition is what will change that. Since I got word in July of my appointment, I have been doing much reading, and I found in one of the subjects that I followed up on with the Brookings Institution in Washington that one of its researchers is showing that the cost of education in the US is starting to drop. That is because of competition, and well-known, reputable universities are now coming into the electronic age in the provision of education. If that trend continues, it will have profound effects, both good and bad, on Irish education, but has very positive effects in terms of what it could make available to the population of the country. It may be that one will not study with an Irish institution but with some other institution, which is interesting because competition will make the Irish education sector sit up and take notice.

My gut feeling is that Brexit is an opportunity for education in Ireland, in both the research and international student areas. It is a matter of whether that will balance out the downside elsewhere of what it is being predicted in the food and agriculture areas. However, there is, I suspect, significant potential for us within the education sector, so we need to be ready for that and ready to take advantage of it.