Professor Michael Gilchrist:

I will pick up on a number of points. The Chairman asked how we have had a ninefold increase in the number of taught programmes. They are taught master's programmes, not PhD level programmes. In engineering, to become a chartered engineer, it is important to have a master's qualification as the primary requirement rather than a bachelor's programme. In UCD we led the development of these. Industry demands that our courses are at this level and industry snaps up our graduates. Let me be particularly clear. We could double the number of engineering graduates and maintain their world class quality but we are at our capacity limit. What that means for us is that if we want to increase the numbers of students beyond our 300 at the moment, we will require significant recurrent funding to reduce our student staff ratio towards the 15:1 ratio. That is similar to the engineering schools at better UK universities, including Imperial College, and other European universities, not even the universities that are the top ranked in the Ivy Leagues in the US, where the student staff ratios are lower than 10:1. It will also require significant capital investment to provide us with additional well-equipped engineering buildings. Deputy Thomas Byrne asked about making the case. I teach first-year engineering students. I was with them last night until 9.30 p.m. doing hands-on project based learning. When we do laboratories, we repeat every lab 15 times so that a small group of five students can get around a piece of apparatus and do it a multiplicity of times.