Mr. Jim Miley:

It was good to hear the feedback on the recent COSAC meeting, which very much reflects the sentiment that we have heard at meetings with our European colleagues. I shall address a couple of the questions and my colleague will pick up on a couple of the other questions because he is best placed to do so.

Senator Craughwell asked about the information economy and the need for an increased emphasis on apprenticeships. We wholeheartedly agree with such an approach and welcome the apprenticeship initiative taken by the Government over the last one to two years. We think that a lot more needs to be done. We would broaden the initiative beyond apprenticeships to include work placement and collaboration with industry and enterprise, which is an agenda that we very much share with IBEC. In that regard, the human capital initiative that the Government announced in last year's budget, and the first tranche will be allocated in next year's budget, is €300 million over five years and €60 million each year starting in 2020. We have been in discussions with the Department of Education and Skills about the initiative. We emphasised that the fund should not just be about the number of placements, apprenticeships or students but bring about system change in third level, particularly how we, as third level providers, can innovate in the delivery of our courses and have greater agility in terms of how we engage with enterprise. We have shared some of our ideas on that with the Department. We hope that the higher education institutes fund would be structured in a way that allows us to work together to progress that agenda. Therefore, we are very much in agreement with the Senator's view on that.

I shall leave it to my colleague to respond to the question on the recognition of qualifications and progression. I shall address the other issue raised by the Senator. I refer to the funding and push by certain forces in the EU to have a greater proportion of Erasmus funding borne by domestic governments. We would be in agreement that that should be strongly resisted. Erasmus is a European fund, which has been very successful, and should remain so. Any moves in that direction need to be resisted and we hope our view can be carried across European interests. I shall revert back to the point I made earlier about the overall funding for the system. It is described here, and maybe I described it as such, as an investment in universities or third level but that is not what this is about. This is about investing in our future. A current Minister has referred to young people as our "oil reserve". Perhaps in these green days talking about an "oil reserve" has become somewhat of a dirty term. However, it is an interesting metaphor because oil reserves are not a whole lot of use unless one invests quite a lot of money to harness them, bring them to the surface and then use them to benefit the economy. Ireland does not have natural resources when compared with almost any of our European competitors. Our economy is now largely built on the oil reserve that is our people. The only way we can keep our competitive edge is if we invest in those people to harness that reserve for the future. This is not about campuses, universities, lecturers and courses. It is actually about the future of our economy. European funds can carry us so far. The following is particularly relevant to research funding. If there is more money for the Horizon Europe 2021 to 2027 programme, and it looks like there is, our capacity to compete for that money is only as good as how much we invest ourselves because it is a matching funding equation, and it is important that we invest more in same.