Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome and thank Mr. Conlon, Mr. Maguire and Ms Kenny. Their presentations and submissions were great.

It is wonderful to see this legislation is putting the student first and foremost and at the centre in everything we are doing here and to see the increase in student numbers alone and, as was mentioned, the number of institutes of technology, IOTs, our new technological universities and our existing universities. It is important to keep the reputation of our colleges in terms of their rankings. I am thinking here about world-wide rankings and QS rankings and things that are based an awful lot on research publications. It is about the masters and PhD students and those cohorts who are really developing the basis for excellence in our third level sector.

I will go through a few of the questions I have. On the HEA, Ms Kenny mentioned the budget as being €1.6 billion. I was curious about that. From what I understand, the majority of the budget, 80%, is core teaching and research, with another 20% contract, which I am guessing would probably be Science Foundation Ireland, SFI, and the Irish Research Council, IRC. SFI would have rolled out a type of capital infrastructure for universities that was based on access, in that it had an access model. What is the most recent spend on capital infrastructure? I am looking at labs and how we develop that sort of space within our universities. What are the plans in regard to the TUs? Does she have a general comment to make on that? That was a quick query.

Quality and Qualifications Ireland, QQI, is very welcome. We are big advocates here of the apprenticeship programme and how we promote it, especially in our further education and training, FET, sector. I do not know who developed the national framework of qualifications, NFQ, the lovely circle where everything fits in, but it is my go-to all the time. Is it the NFQ cycle? My apologies, but I do not know the name of it. Mr. Maguire mentioned an overlap with the Higher Education Authority, HEA. Can he talk to me about what that overlap is?

Mr. Conlon mentioned the HEA Act is five decades old and Ireland has changed an awful lot in 50 years. We are looking at the student numbers and at how to accommodate our new technological universities. The governance factor, which was mentioned, is very important. Mr. Conlon noted there is representation from staff and students on that and that it will be competency-based. What does he see as a metric once this Bill goes through? In, say, three or four years' time, what would be two or three things we could point to as achievements from this legislation? I hope that is not too broad a statement.