Dr. Patricia Mulcahy:

The Chairman has been a great supporter of this development and has been at every conferring during my time in this role at the magnificent Wexford Opera House. It has always been a wonderful occasion.

As I mentioned, there is a commitment to purchase the site. Once that is done, we can start the work of designing the first phases and the phased development of the Wexford campus. That is a critical point to get to. As I said earlier, all higher education institutions gave details of their priorities under the review of the national development plan and we have included a significant amount for that first phase. We have made a business case on it to the relevant authorities in education, including the pros and cons of remaining in the leased building and the need for this new development as soon as possible to provide additional facilities to the students to accommodate even our existing 500 and to allow for a threefold increase in the number of students there within the coming decade. That deals with the build on the site.

There is much talk about a faculty being located on a particular campus. That is not the way we are thinking at the moment, but it will be a matter for the new organisation. We envisage faculties that are cross-campus so that one discipline is not confined to a particular campus but that it can serve the needs of the region. We already have a good portfolio of programmes available in Wexford that do not exist in our Carlow campus or in our Wicklow campus; they have been customised for Wexford. That kind of approach will be taken forward. How the programme portfolio is delivered across the campuses will be a critical decision for the new organisation and will take some time to develop.

On the Chairman's third question, we are fully committed to achieving designation on 1 January 2022. A number of steps need to happen before that, including the submission of the application. Both colleges, Waterford IT and IT Carlow, are fully committed to making that deadline. A significant amount of work remains to be completed in that time, but we are all committed to doing that. All the staff and students involved in the two colleges are very supportive. We also have good support from stakeholders. At this stage we are trying to demonstrate integrated activity and integrated thinking not just across the colleges but across the region. We are working on that with the help of all the stakeholders in the region and that will make it a success. As long as that can continue and we can build on that, I would have the confidence that the Chairman asked me about.