Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will try to go through the questions quickly, as I want to talk about the funding. We have three research funding agencies within the remit of my Department. We have Science Foundation Ireland, SFI, the Irish Research Council, IRC, and then we have each of the individual higher education institutions, HEIs, which I will group together as HEIs. The current thinking of the Department is that we will try to get our hands on the funding programme for research and then we will provide it to the agencies and individual institutions in line with fulfilling a commitment or aim in the national development plan. In other words, the Department would not be passive in this regard, but we would set out what we want to achieve as a Government and as a country regarding research, and the plan identifies which agency is the best to do it.

I have an open mind on creating an umbrella structure over that. The first challenge is to secure the funding in the national development plan. I am very hopeful on that. The Taoiseach is very supportive of it and he has done a significant amount of work on it. By the end of the year we want to put in place Ireland's new national research policy, which will clearly define what each agency does. The collaboration is largely through the regional skills forums and through the strategic dialogues with me and the Department. I note that in Deputy Pádraig O'Sullivan's part of the world there is a really good example already in UCC, which has very much welcomed the MTU and is working with it. They see each other as collaborating and complementing each other rather than being competitors and providing the full spectrum.

On the funding model, I am going to share my thinking, although I cannot say it is Government thinking because I have not been to the Government on this yet. I do not favour student loans. I think they are a bad idea and have a detrimental effect on people from lower socio-economic backgrounds in terms of taking on debt and so forth. I expect to have the output of the economic evaluation around May. It is my preference that we would publish that and have an informed debate or discussion on it. There are basically three components to the proper funding of the higher education system. One is the core funding deficit. What is that level? I have an idea but I will wait for the report to tell me. The second bucket of funding is what is required to have an adequate, fit-for-purpose SUSI fund. The third element is what is required if we wish to reduce or abolish the registration fees.

If we take those three buckets or clusters of funding and add them up, that is the totality of funding required. I do not think it is impossible over the lifetime of the Government to really chip away at this and make very serious progress. Again, I know the Taoiseach is really committed to this and that is why we established a Department with a focus on these issues. I would expect that by the summer months we will be having some really interesting conversations about this but it must be about inclusion. It has to be about realism but it must also be about inclusion. Accessing an undergraduate degree, if that is what one wishes to do, should be a continuum of one's education in Ireland. Indeed, it has been for many people but there are still too many barriers to it. I will be back with the evidence and the economic input from the European Commission around May of this year.