Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Yes. A figure of 14,000 was referred to. There are 4,000 postgraduate students and they will have made career choices. We do not expect them to come back. Regarding capacity, 5,531 beds have been completed in the past year, 4,825 are being constructed and 7,901 planning permissions are being sought for accommodation. We are working in the area and are on top of it. I go back to what the Minister said about internationalisation. We are very conscious that the English language is very important to our economy and country. As for our international students, we are very conscious that we need to be globally connected. We are growing the numbers of international students in line with best practice such that 15% of students within our higher education institutions will be international students. We are sure we will meet our target of increasing the number from 33,000 to 44,000 by 2020.