Dr. Sheila Flanagan:

I thank Dr. Mulvey. I was particularly interested in Senator Byrne’s question on the shared island opportunities. He wants to know what the ask is and what we need to put into this report. Alongside the infrastructural needs that exist there are softer needs that could also be targeted through the shared island initiative. I am thinking in particular about the region within which we work. We are right on the Border and it is a region in which there are large pockets of social and community disadvantage both in Dundalk, Drogheda, Newry, Belfast and further back down in the South. Many of our students and in our partner colleges both in the further education and higher education colleges on both side of the Border are the first in their generation to access higher education. That is critically important for development within the region.

The opportunities for us to further engage with our partners in the University of Ulster, in Queens University Belfast, in the Southern Regional College and in the South Eastern Regional College, to continue those further to higher education links my colleagues in Letterkenny spoke about earlier and to develop new and innovative curricula that are responding to the needs of the region are really important.

Taking the area of placement, where many of our students within Dundalk go out on placement, if one looks at our region which is essentially north Leinster and south Ulster, 85% of our students undertake a placement within the region. More importantly, just under 60% of our graduates on graduation are employed within that region of south Ulster and north Leinster. They graduate and stay within that region. Therefore, investment in shared curricula designed to drive economic growth is very important for the stability of this region and is also very important where the shared island unit has the capacity to deliver on this access initiative that we have spoken about and to deliver on the mobility of students. It also has the capacity to deliver on regional development, and very importantly, taking into consideration what we know has happened over the past number of generations in Northern Ireland, I would argue that shared curriculum development which enhances and raises economic development will play a very significant role in deconstructing the binary narrative that has existed throughout the more recent generations. I thank the Chairman.