David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to come back to the issue of the higher education sector and the work programme. I may not have been clear at the previous meeting, so I will be a bit clearer now. So many different issues with regard to the higher education sector are being juggled at this committee and there are so many elements to it that a level of coherence is needed. I do not know if it has been done. There are some areas where we just need additional information and where we seeking information. That is fine and we will deal with that aspect. There are other areas where we need more scrutiny. The committee needs to return to some issues with Cork Institute of Technology , the University of Limerick, Waterford Institute of Technology and some education and training boards. There are also reports, published or not, and we need some level - perhaps a paper - to put some shape on to all of that. Then we can make a decision as to how to proceed. I am conscious that we do not have that.

There is a bigger issue, where a spotlight needs to be put on the Higher Education Authority. If the HEA's role is to govern and if it is about governance, then that is what it should do. The committee dealt with the correspondence around funding for independent reports, legal and consultancy and all of that, and we now have the data. What are we doing with it and how are we going to approach it? Is it possible that such a paper could be done for the committee? It could be broken down in terms of what attention is given to the various issues and what actions are needed. Some actions, for example, may just be the committee waiting on information. Other actions may be that witnesses and organisations need to be brought back to the committee again and so on.