Mr. William Beausang:

The objective to establish technological universities was set out in the higher education strategy in 2011. As we came to 2018 and 2019, despite significant funding having been allocated to support that objective and to build capacity in the institutions, we were encountering very serious difficulties in delivering on that objective or vision. Technological University Dublin, TU Dublin, had been established by the amalgamation of three institutions from the beginning of 2019 and a single person chaired the governing body of each institute. It was our assessment that leadership could be provided by one individual representing the role of the institution to be rather than, as would be the case in other circumstances, existing presidents, who have to be conscious of the interests of their own institutions. When the Munster technological university consortium ran into difficulties in getting its application over the line, we recommended that it find an individual to discharge the type of role played by the chairs of the governing bodies of the three institutions that were ultimately established as TU Dublin. Independently of the Department, the two institutions, Cork Institute of Technology and the Institute of Technology, Tralee, appointed Tom Boland to that role. He worked with the institutions, their staff and student representatives to secure the successful designation of Munster Technological University. When we turned our attentions to the long-standing issues with the technological university for the south east, we made the same suggestion to the two presidents, who provided us with a list of individuals they believed could fulfil that role.

In order to support the process, we met with three people and for various reasons, none of those individuals wished to take up the role. The two institutes then identified Mr. Tom Boland, given his experience and performance in the Munster Technological University, as an appropriate person to discharge that executive leadership role in TUSEI. To be fair, he is only just one person working with the institutions, their staff, the project team and a large number of working groups to successfully secure the submission of an application for the establishing of a technological university, which I understand will be assessed by the international panel from the beginning of July. I hope we are on a time path to the establishment of a really important strategic objective in the south east, a technological university that we hope can be transformative in terms of regional development needs.