Professor Ciarán Ó Catháin:

I will begin but my colleagues will come in on a couple of questions. Deputy Thomas Byrne said we played it down but we acknowledge the financial crisis. However, the HEA report last week made it very clear that six of the institutes are currently in a perilous situation, and four could join them. It is linked to the fact that many of the institutes have been using their reserves to fill in their black holes arising from the drop in State funding. Their reserves are dropping because they are using them to keep themselves financially viable and maintain their day-to-day operational spend. We have heretofore been able to use the reserve for some of the nicer things we would like to do, such as bringing in additional staff to support weaker and disadvantaged students or for new buildings and additional laboratory equipment. We are being prevented from doing that as we now have to fill the gaps left by the lack of State funding.

We did not come here today to present ourselves as the poor institutes of technology sector. We are very proud of what we do and of our achievements and we have worked very hard. At the start of the crisis we said we would work with the Government to get the State through the difficulties. Now that we have come out of them we are asking the State to recognise the importance of the sector by helping us out. In a press release on the HEA report, we called for a stability fund of approximately €130 million over a five-year period, which would significantly help take the pressure off our colleagues.