Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank our guests. I found their presentations and all the issues discussed really interesting, exciting and relevant in respect of this area and the future of our country. I found it great. Our colleague, Senator Malcolm Byrne, has ably and correctly identified several key issues on which he has posed questions to the witnesses. There will be a level of overlap in that regard, but I will still pursue some questions and offer some comments.

I live in east Cavan and have an office in Cavan town, and I wish my neighbours in Dundalk good luck in their pursuit of technological university status. In that context, unfortunately, I had to miss the presentation given some weeks ago for Oireachtas members. I regret that greatly, because I would have found it very worthwhile. Turning to a point that may well be echoed by Senator Gallagher later, and he will be well able to speak for himself, the experience of DkIT has been very positive, judging from my area and the people with whom I interact. This is not the subject of today's agenda, but I wish the college well in its endeavours.

I am impressed with the college's strategy of increasingly targeting students from Northern Ireland. In that sense I am completely ad idemand enthusiastic about the shared island concept. The key to achieving permanent peace and unity on our island, to which we all aspire, lies in the building and normalisation of interpersonal relationships and people living together in a relaxed and normal fashion. Education and people going through education processes present an obvious opportunity to achieve such an aim. Therefore, I am happy that there is increased targeting of students from Northern Ireland. I hope that will continue and increase, and that students from the South will go North as well. This is a very encouraging initiative and doubtlessly Letterkenny IT is doing the same. It would not be any harm if the witnesses wished to comment further on that aspect and their future intentions in the area. It is certainly very relevant.

All our guests were excellent and enlightening. I was disturbed, however, to hear some of the earlier comments that we will not have the capacity to take in the numbers of people who will wish to come into Ireland as a consequence of Brexit and the UK being outside the European Union. That is a very disturbing prospect. I ask the witnesses to elaborate on that point. A cynic might say the witnesses are just using this subject to cry wolf but I do not think they are. The witnesses might wish to state what facilities they lack in this regard and what initiatives the Government could take, because it would be a tragedy from every perspective to not engage with this opportunity.

People coming here to study become ambassadors for Ireland if they subsequently leave, and not all do, and that is apart from their personal financial, academic and intellectual involvement with and contribution to the country. I am interested, then, in hearing what the witnesses think is required to allow us to ensure that we will be able to take every student who wishes to come here, within the prevailing norms of international travel, visa requirements, security constraints and so on. I am anxious that there should not be a deficit in the number of people we take in future years in higher education, and I ask the witnesses to elaborate on where the existing limitations and problems lie, how the Government might resolve them and what it would take to do that.

I am coming across this issue of the inflation in the costs of building materials, even in very different contexts. It is a major issue and it is going to have an impact right across the economy and it cannot be addressed without being tackled universally. It is a great difficulty which has arisen from several factors, including Brexit, the blockage of the Suez Canal recently and others. It is certainly a problem in all sectors of the economy.

I heard from people in clubs recently that they could not accept their LEADER grants because they would not be able to make up the differential due to inflation in building prices. In the context of what I spoke about earlier, there is a good flow of students between North and South, with more than 1,500 students moving from the North to study in the South and 2,000 from the South moving to the North in 2019 and 2020. Returning to my original point, how much can we increase those numbers?

As the witnesses said, the Erasmus+ programme will continue to involve the UK until 2023, when the UK's Turing programme will take over. It was interesting that 88 students from the UK came here in 2014 and 110 came in 2019, while 210 people from Ireland in 2019 availed of mobility opportunities and study visits in the UK, with half of those going to London. Those students were distributed across a good range of training areas and colleges. That is very important. I ask the witnesses to elaborate on what the Government could do to ensure that such mobility continues under the auspices of the new Turing programme arrangements and that whatever we call it, whether Erasmus+ or Turing, that such activity is still an exciting learning reality for students. Such exchanges lead to enhanced mutual understanding and are good for many reasons. I was impressed not only that 210 people were involved but also by the spread of institutions. It is also critical that traineeships are involved.

My major concern as a person from the Border area, having previously represented a Dáil constituency and representing the region in the Seanad, is to ensure we bring together the hearts and minds of people on our island and normalise relationships. We do not have a border at the moment with regard to physical travel and the movement of goods, and please God it stays that way, despite the trouble over the Northern Ireland protocol. I hope we will not have a border in terms of hearts and minds and intellectual pursuits. That is why I am so positively disposed towards the concept of a greater number of students partaking in exchanges between North and South and having a good holistic experience. I am delighted the Government is sponsoring the Erasmus+ programme for students from Northern Ireland. It is a worthwhile initiative and it should continue.

Those are some of my observations regarding this area. I am conscious of some degree of overlap with the excellent questions raised by Senator Malcolm Byrne but, as a person from the Border region, I feel I should make these points independently as well.