Professor Willie Donnelly:

I wish to clarify a point in case there is a misunderstanding regarding the €5 million. The development of research and innovation in postgraduate studies in the institutes of technology sector is one of the great success stories of Ireland. If we look back at the role of the institutes of technology, they have always responded to the needs of their region. When we started we had trades and certificates. When industry needed degree students and there was a cap on degree students in universities, the institutes of technology responded and we created degree programmes. In the digital economy the need is for the creation of knowledge. The institutes have responded to this by developing an internationally benchmarked postgraduate research programme. This has been done in an environment that has been quite hostile to the institutes. For instance, it is probably not known by many committee members that the universities receive 25% of their core funding to cover research activities while the institutes get absolutely nothing.

We have brought in €67 million of research funding through international competitive funding, have more than 400 PhD students registered throughout the institutes and are graduating students who will go directly into industry attracted to the region. In the south-east region, the unemployment rate dropped from 14% to 10.7%. It is still too high but this was directly because of the decision of foreign direct investment to come into the region because of the quality of the ongoing research.

Another vital element of this research is with regard to the imbalance in the Irish economy and too much investment in Dublin. Our centres, which support indigenous start-up companies, have had a huge impact on employment in the regions. The €5 million is misunderstood in one sense. We use Enterprise Ireland investment, which is jointly funded by Enterprise Ireland and the company involved, and this is not included in the €5 million. There were 823 collaborations with 573 companies. These involve a certain amount of investment by industry. The €5 million is really only work that industry wanted to do in which it did not want to include Enterprise Ireland or any State funding, usually for intellectual property reasons. Even in the universities, the level of direct investment by industry in Ireland is very low. As part of overall investment in the institutes of technology, if we want to balance economic development between Dublin and the regions, having a policy where the institutes are recognised as being part of research and postgraduate studies, including 25% for research in the core budget, as is the case in the universities, would be a big move forward.