David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We sought this quite comprehensive report because this committee recently shone a spotlight on third level institutes and their funding. A number of institutes of technology are running deficits. When we looked at it, I think Waterford had the highest deficit proportionally. We are trying to understand the reason for that and what corrective action is being taken. It seems that there a number of reasons, including consolidation of companies after a statutory inspection that took place in the institute. There was regularising of certain income streams. It noted the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General into how certain income streams were accounted for. It also talks about cutbacks in funding for higher education. I assume it is talking about the austerity years, when there were cutbacks. It has an accumulated deficit of €6.8 million. The last line is worrying, where it states that despite making savings in both pay and non-pay, the institute could not match the income cuts with comparable expenditure savings. It is essentially telling us that it cannot bridge the gap, which is a considerable deficit. It looks like it is not entirely the institute's fault, if at all, if it was a result of significant cuts at the time.

If that has not been dealt with by the Department, that is a difficulty for the institute. I know that a cost containment plan was put in place that resulted in significant reductions in services on at least one campus in an attempt to deal with it. The problem here is that the institute cannot deal with pay, which is a big part of any institute's spending. When it starts trying to cut non-pay expenditure, it becomes very difficult. It is a very similar situation to a hospital.

It might be useful to look at WIT as a test case in terms of the other institutes. Perhaps we could bring representatives of WIT in and look at what happened and the history of this. WIT has set out very clearly for us the history going back to 2011 and how it ended up in this situation. It is, it seems, trying to recover and to deal with the deficit. There was a drop-off in student numbers. WIT says there has been an increase again, which is helping. However, I find the last line very worrying because this is an institute that, it is hoped, will transition into a technological university with Carlow yet it is carrying this big deficit and does not seem to be able to manage it, it seems, through no fault of its own because it just does not have the income to do it. It cannot cut in areas in which it cannot cut, such as pay, obviously. I request that we have a look at this as part of our work programme. We did a lot of work on third level institutes and now we have moved on to other issues. However, this is one of those legacy issues. I refer to how WIT is funded; consolidation of other companies, which in this case happened; how that has played a part in the deficit; and, more importantly, the cuts in funding to higher education and how they are still biting for some institutes of technology. Would that be a reasonable request, that we perhaps look at Waterford as-----