Mr. Tony Donohoe:

There is good alignment currently. Ireland was one of the first countries to have a national framework for qualifications and the one we have is robust and well recognised. It is aligned with the UK framework and there is a read across on the different levels. The UK calls a level 6 a level 5 as it has a smaller number of levels. We have ten levels whereas the UK has eight. However, there has been a great deal of work on alignment, a lot of which was done, ironically enough, during the last boom. A lot of labour was coming in at the time and the then-qualifications agency did significant work on that. Its website eventually became that of Quality and Qualifications Ireland, QQI. A lot of work has been done to read across different types of framework. However, the Deputy's general point is interesting. One of the first responses to Brexit came from higher education. Many of the universities started to get inquiries from British-based academics and it was not just Irish people working in UK institutions. Something like Brexit goes against the core of academics and there is nothing more international than higher education. As such, there were many unprompted inquiries to education institutions here. It could work both ways but we see it as an opportunity as well, not just in higher education but in financial services and so on.