Mr. Tom Molloy:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to address it. I am not sure that I can be quite as optimistic as Professor Ferguson.

I am talking on behalf of Trinity College. It is important to note that Trinity College has always prided itself on being an all-island university. Through good times and bad, during the Troubles and during present times we have always made strenuous efforts to attract students from the North to Trinity College. Around half of all students from the North study at Trinity College. Our policy has succeeded and we worry about it now with Brexit.

Trinity College is a research intensive university that receives about half of all Excellence in Cities, EIC, grants that are given to Ireland. Trinity College is a research powerhouse and we are concerned about Horizon 2020.

I will talk about three things that are both an opportunity and a threat. The first one is academics. There is clearly a great opportunity to hire really good people from the UK who might be leaving because they are unhappy with their situation. The problems that we face in Trinity College are as follows. First, our corridors and offices are full. Second, we do not have the money to pay salaries. Third, we do not have the money to house people. If one wants to attract a Nobel prizewinner to Ireland he or she needs laboratories and assistants. He or she needs a lot of people and a support system. Such people do not come by themselves. Maybe in the arts they do but in the sciences they do not. Researchers need a big infrastructure and we, frankly, do not have the money to do it at the moment. Nor do we have the flexibility. Star academics attract many good students and bring a lot of good research with them. They are free to negotiate whatever salary they want if they go to a place like Germany. It is very tempting to go to Germany because researchers are well looked after there, tax is lower and the cost of housing is lower, which are all of the usual things that prevent people from coming to Ireland.

One of the features of higher education is that one must compete for talent in an international but we are constrained by public sector norms. If the committee is thinking of ways to help third level education then funding research is one way. The pay restraints should be loosened in order to attract star academics to work in areas that are important for the national interest. Also, the same should be done with the restraints around hiring spouses, etc., that are problematic. Normally if one has a Nobel prizewinner her husband also works in the academic sector and maybe he must travel as well. I have outlined one opportunity but it is one that we are in danger of squandering. The problem with academia is that everything moves quite slowly. If we want to attract people for 2019 then we must plan now. Unfortunately, we have no oversight for how to do so.

Horizon 2020 is the main funding stream for Trinity College and Professor Ferguson has alluded to it earlier. Horizon 2020 costs a huge amount of money. When I was a boy I remember Albert Reynolds coming back to this country and telling us that he had obtained £6 million punts for Ireland. Horizon 2020 and its successor programme, which is coming down the tracks, will probably cost around €120 billion. That is a really big pot of money that our universities must be able to divvy up and get as much of it as they can. Most of our research is done in collaboration with UK universities. Perhaps it should not be but for reasons of history, language and everything else the valuable and meaningful contracts are done in collaboration with UK universities. It is by no means clear that such a practice will be possible in the future. Already we have seen signs that it is problematic with a UK university because nobody knows what will happen in five years' time. For Trinity College, and I know the same applies for all Irish universities, it would be useful if we could as soon as possible have an idea of what will happen with Horizon 2020.

Everybody in this House should be upset that there are no Irish people on the negotiating committee that is negotiating Framework Programme 9, FP9, which is the successor to Horizon 2020. In the past we have often relied on the UK because of shared norms and beliefs to push certain agendas. However, we are on our own now. If we want to push an agenda then we must ensure that Irish people are on the committee that matters in Brussels. We need diplomatic and all kinds of help to make that happen. Trinity College has joined an association of the 20 best research intensive universities in Europe. We are using the initiative as much as we can to unlock those connections but we are at the beginning. Everybody knows that Brussels is a difficult place but we must network. Too often in the Brexit debate we talk about Britain but we are not talking about where we have to go but where we were. Our big challenge is not to double down on the bet that we made by having partnerships with British universities. Our big challenge is to open up challenges with universities on the Continent.

I wish to highlight the issue of students from Northern Ireland. Trinity College prides itself and is in practice an all-island university. No student in the North knows whether he or she will have to pay between €18,000 to €20,000 a year, which could well happen, once Brexit negotiations finish. Such fees would herald the end of students from the North studying in this country. This country must decide whether it wants that to happen. If it does not want that to happen then it must offer guarantees. As far as I can see, that can be done unilaterally. Of course that is up to the committee to think about and it is not for me to say. If we want students to come from the North and, conversely, if we want our students to go to the North then we must give clarity on fees. One cannot expect any family to sign a blank cheque.

There is another problem. As many as 12,000 Irish people study in the UK every year. Most of them will probably decide that they cannot pay the foreign student fees and so will return. In the next 18 months or so we could see an extra 10,000 students entering the already overcrowded Irish system. As the committee will know, it would mean a 5% increase overnight on top of the democratic barge.

This country and our negotiators can think about Ireland's involvement in Horizon 2020, the fate of Northern Irish students who want to study in the South and how best to attract high flying academics who would bring great teaching, research and knowledge to this country. I thank the committee for listening to me.