Dr. Bryan Maguire:

As Mr. Conlon said, the institutions have various performance targets that are individually crafted to match their local missions and ambitions but it is not just a question of meeting quantitative targets. It is not just about the width but the quality as well. The performance framework includes cross-references to quality assurance and review activities in which QQI would have taken part. To give a concrete example, last year there were a lot of questions about institutions shifting to online in the Covid pandemic. That was not envisaged as part of the performance framework and yet it had to be done. QQI co-ordinated a response with a number of other agencies, including the HEA, to gather as much evidence as we could to see what kind of response there had been in the circumstances, whether the students had been well served, if we could have confidence in the graduates who graduated last year and so on. That is an indication of the complementary methods of the two agencies but we need to know what we are trying to achieve in the first place and that is what the framework sets out.