Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Going back to the earlier discussion, I would be grateful if the Minister of State clarified the following. If, for instance, an institution in some part of the country is on its own and does not have an obvious partner, or has a partner indicated by the Department but does not want to join with that particular partner, will the Minister of State confirm that the institution is free to put forward a proposal to join with an institution, for instance, in Dublin or Cork, even though they may not be in the one region, if it is the desire of those institutions to so merge? For the sake of example, suppose Dundalk, Athlone or Carlow wanted to join the Dublin technological university. I know it is a bit of an extreme example, but the Minister of State laid a lot of emphasis on the fact that there must be two or more institutions. Can those institutions be selected nationally? I was a little taken aback that in her reference to Athlone IT, which is a significant institution with particular specialisations, the Minister of State implied in her previous statement, as I understood it, that its numbers were not sufficient to merit an application as one of the two or more institutions. The same may well apply to Carlow IT if, for instance, it were not able to address the ongoing discussions between it and Waterford IT. When the Minister of State uses the term "region", does that mean there are options with other parts of the country where there are institutions with which they might well wish to be associated?