Professor Diarmuid Hegarty:

If I may, I will comment on the sectional interest from the point of view of the private institutions. As the chair of the Higher Education Colleges Association I would like to see more research within the private institutions. In our submission I have said that we would like to see the HEA encouraging the removal of the obstacles. We have obstacles that really represent a Catch-22: if one has no experience in research then one does not get work in research. We would like to see the HEA encouraging co-operation between the public sector institutions and the private institutions to build a research capability in the private institutions, which I believe would be in the national interests.