Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Byrne asked are the institutes of technology going alone, is the Government helping them or are we allowing them to decide themselves. For the main part, they have intimated consortia that they would like to be in. They are not going alone without any support. Even yesterday, I announced a budget. They had a budget last year. There will be budgets built in to support the formation of the technological universities, TUs, throughout the country.

I have met many of the institutes of technology, IoTs, and their management.

Of course, there are questions. This is a whole new merger and project. Of course, there are many questions to be answered and solutions to be found and ironed out when a merger happens. Deputy Troy asked specifically about Athlone. It is clearly Government policy to consolidate institutes of technologies in a technological universities sector. We will be building scale and capacity to make it attractive for students and staff in the regions where the technological universities are located. Deputy Troy mentioned to me often when I was Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, as did others, that it is very important to have skills and students in the regions. That is one of the reasons we are strongly working to ensure students have opportunities to gain a technological university education within their region instead of having to move from the places they reside to a certain city and never going back. We believe it will really strengthen the sector by creating universities. We were advised by the OECD in 2004 as well as in the Hunt report about maintaining the binary divide. We are seeking to ensure that consolidated institutes of technology bring students together and create strong universities. We would have a critical mass of students and lecturers in an area. That will be an add-on for students.