David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

No, that was the point. We had a discussion on this last time and I think it was accepted that it was not as difficult as was being suggested. We will have to come back to it at some point, maybe we should wait until the report comes from Waterford, but Science Foundation Ireland, Enterprise Ireland and the HEA are all players in this. We now have a report which makes changes and which came about as a result of the work of this committee. I still have a number of questions. I am not satisfied that all the concerns that we raised have been dealt with sufficiently in the report.

I will also put it on record that it is quite interesting that this report, the generic one, has been published and then we will have a Waterford report. We cannot pre-empt what will be in that but it is somewhat similar to what has happened in other areas of the third level sector. There was a "Prime Time" programme which highlighted issues on accountability, and the Minister published a report which said the Department was going to make changes. Then our report came out. The Department can point to its report and say that it is dealing with the matter already. An element of that is going on in the HEA.

We have to come back to it. We cannot merely bookend it and say that we have the reports and that is it. Issues remain. I propose that once we have the Waterford report and this national review of all institutes, we return to it. I ask that Science Foundation Ireland and Enterprise Ireland, some of the third level institutes and the HEA would come before the committee and we would do a session on the matter because it seems to be very much geared toward the commercialisation part of it, and there seems to be a bias towards the enterprise side of it rather than protecting the institutes. Several members have expressed concerns in that regard. Questions remain to be asked. That is my sense of it.