Professor Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh:

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Seanadóir. Is maith an rud é í a fheiceáil arís. I thank her for her service on Údarás na hOllscoile, which was very valuable to us. I completely endorse her comments on staff and colleagues. When I stood in our drawing room in the quad and informed people, at short notice, that we were moving university activities online, I did not imagine that we would maintain academic activity online for a year and a half. We were able to do so because colleagues quietly went about their business, supported students and put them to the forefront and supported research. They were keen to come back to do research and to come back to teaching. In either December or January, I had a sense that we could have done more in the second semester, if public health advice had allowed, because our colleagues wanted to do so. That is a great endorsement of our colleagues. I again put on record our thanks for that.

It is the same case for student support. The Senator is right. It may be because the context is different but we are finding that retention rates are slightly higher than they were last year, although that is based on raw data, as Senator Malcolm Byrne has mentioned. That may not translate once we come back to campus. How that will work out remains to be seen. In that context, student support will be critical. Much of the funding the Irish Universities Association has asked for through the Department relates to student support. I have certainly been advocating for that and supporting our students' union in that regard. I am talking about directed student support. It is not for the university per sebut for students. I would certainly advocate for that.

Ventilation has emerged as a particularly important issue throughout the pandemic. There are a couple of aspects to it. One relates to the systems themselves, keeping them up-to-date and looking at international norms in that regard. A second aspect relates to the capacity of rooms. Not all large rooms will return to 100% capacity. We will have slightly smaller capacities depending on the ability of the systems to extract air quickly enough. We are also considering shorter lecture times. Rather than the normal 50 minutes to an hour, we are likely to ask for 45-minute lectures to allow for exit and egress but also to allow some time to ventilate the room between lectures. CO₂monitors are an excellent idea. We will look at that if we are not already doing so. We are certainly very keen to have transparency as to how the system may work. We have found that ventilation is a key aspect and it is something at which we are looking very carefully, particularly in the context of larger rooms. We will have to make sure that rooms are properly ventilated and to be transparent about that but this may result in lower than normal capacity. That is what we are looking at in the context of ventilation.