Mr. Paul Hannigan:

I thank Senator Flynn for those questions. Living in Donegal like me, she is well aware of the circumstances that she is raising in her questions.

The question on the leaving certificate experience ties into the previous question. At the beginning of this academic year, we encouraged the students who entered college in 2020 to come to college. Some were talking about deferring or taking a year out. Everything that used to be available to them had been taken away, for example, their sporting and social outlets. Our advice was to come to college and engage with the programme. Most had to do their courses online, but we told them to make use of the year instead of wasting it. For us, the initial wish was to get as many students on campus we as could. The public health guidelines determined how many we could, so we had to reduce our September numbers to a lower number in December before moving everything online for the moment. I hope that we will return in March.

Students have been resilient in how they have engaged. The funding from the Department that allowed us to provide laptops to up to 400 students was important. They were signed up for immediately and taken on board quickly by the students involved. Now that the first semester has been completed, we are seeing a positive engagement by students with their course content, their examinations and their performance at same. We are not losing sight of the question. It is one that we must work on continuously. I am sitting in an office in Letterkenny but there is not a student anywhere in this place. I have not set eyes on many students at all this academic year, which is disappointing because, as everyone has stated, having community, engagement and life around the place is important. We want to get students back on campus as soon as we can, but only when it is safe to do so.

Regarding vocational education and apprenticeships, we must also consider that, in one way or another, all institutes provide access programmes and foundation programmes in various areas to allow different access routes into college, including through their full-time offerings. One access programme tends to get a higher profile than others, which is a source of annoyance for some of us around the table because we are doing this day in, day out. A few people around the table have heard me giving out about this previously. The access programmes that our colleges run are innovative and good at getting people back into second chance education. I will provide a statistic that came across my table again this morning and that I am seeing more frequently. We have had a significant number of mature students in full-time programmes in our 23 years plus, but that number is dwindling nationally. These people are in jobs and are now coming to us on part-time or flexible learning models or whatever that we could not provide previously online. The nature of the part-time student is changing to a certain extent.

We are adapting, modifying and leading that to a certain extent. I get the questions that have been asked. It is a constant challenge day to day, but all of us in our own way are addressing that challenge. The issue is high on the agenda for THEA and all of the institutions as we move towards technological university status.