Professor Tom Collins:

Student numbers in the institutes since 2008 have risen by between 25% and 30%, depending on whom one asks. They have risen within a fixed envelope for education funding in which 60% of the recurrent budget goes to the universities and 40% to the institutes. The 40% has been a contracting envelope but has been shared by a greater number of students. It involves doing an awful lot more with substantially less. The institutes are funded on a current funding model and are not allowed to run deficits or borrow. Even though they are facing a potential cashflow crisis, they are reasonably robust in that they do not have a legacy of borrowing or other charges. Their key legacy now is one of underinvestment, especially on the capital side for the past ten years.

Deputy Burton spoke about engineering and laboratories. I used to head up the Dundalk Institute of Technology and we used to give our used computers, on an altruistic basis, to primary schools so that they could be introduced to computing. I do not know if the institute has gone back to the schools to ask for its computers back but we are approaching that stage in the sector generally.