Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thought the attitude was almost that by questioning something, one was put into the anti-enterprise box, which is not what was intended. Very often, industry wants to locate close to universities and does that for a range of different reasons. Much of it has to do with partnering with universities. There is no doubt there is a benefit and there can be a two-way benefit. A lot of that is very desirable. However, I was less than impressed with the HEA. I thought it was very underwhelming in terms of its contributions at the committee. We are relying on it to evaluate something it was not great at. I agree with Deputy Connolly in that regard. It may well be an academic who can do this but I would like to see an international comparator about how this is handled in other countries because we need to compare it to something else or somewhere else where there is something in the same family and where there is good practice. I am quite sure that one of the business schools will have carried out some work in that area. It is a bit ironic to ask an academic to input into something like this but I think we might not be getting a good look at the way we should be progressing on this by relying exclusively on the HEA.