Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I think the Senator was instrumental in my being invited here. I think he had a Commencement Matter a few months ago on professional qualifications and mutual recognition. I went into it in my opening statement but a significant amount of progress has been made due to very pragmatic, intensive and painstaking engagement by many regulators - probably more than 40 - to work our way through this. The overall view is "so far, so good" but there is a need for a watching brief on this. My Department remains actively engaged in a working group.

I will follow the issue of SUSI grants for students in Northern Ireland. I am very pleased and proud of the fact that despite Brexit, we have managed to make sure that educational supports that were in place for people in Northern Ireland remain in place. I very much want that to continue to be the case. I would not like any student in the North to face unnecessary bureaucracy in that regard. Obviously, there must be the normal checks and balances that we all have to go through but I would not like there to be any barrier, perceived or otherwise, so I will certainly follow that up. I am more than happy to engage and correspond with the Senator on that.

In terms of North-South and Erasmus in general, I said at the start of the meeting that we have announced very clearly our intention to do this in respect of higher education. It now seems it will not be required for the new academic year because there are unspent funds in the North but we are ready to pick up the baton when it is required the following academic year. I have also just indicated that we would like to expand to further education and I intend to talk to Government colleagues and bring a memorandum to Government on that in the coming weeks. It will require engagement with the European Commission so we are not there yet but it is a body of work we will do. It would be really good if we could get all of that over the line.

In terms of how we get the message out, I have had a conversation with the Union of Students in Ireland, USI, which does great work on an all-island basis, about the need to have a conversation with students on the island of Ireland, North and South, about how we can co-operate more on educational matters. Based on this conversation, I will pick that up again. We have a very exciting agenda when it comes to North and South be it all-island research centres; cross-Border research projects; the commitments that the British and Irish Governments have made under New Decade, New Approach in terms of Magee, the ability to do more between Letterkenny and Magee, which I referenced, and between Queen's University and Dundalk; the fact that we will now have a PEACE PLUS skills programme for Border counties; and the shared island unit and the Taoiseach's desire to do a lot more and viewing education as a big part of that shared island unit. Officially, the answer to the Senator's question is the message will be put out through higher education institutions and it will be for them to tell their students. The broader political question concerns how we engage and make it very clear to students in the North that they will not be left behind and that the Irish Government wants to continue to engage and do more regardless of Brexit. In our messages North, South, east and west, we want to do more in respect of co-operation in higher and further education, research, innovation and science and we are not going to let Brexit get in the way of that. I might pursue a conversation with USI about how we might usefully be able to engage. When Covid allows, I very much look forward to going to the North and engaging directly with students and higher education institutions there.