Dr. Joseph Ryan:

Yes, the TU sector. Again, the international piece has bounced back and a lot of that has to do with the way Ireland cared for international students. It did us well on reputation there.

On the question of upskilling and reskilling, that is a big debate between the further education and training sector, FET, and higher education. There is an integration piece there. There is opportunity attaching to the new Department, which might not be caught. We are also conscious of European funding in this. We have just completed an application under the national recovery and resilience plan around upskilling and reskilling, which comes under the NextGenerationEU programme, which I mentioned in my submission.

The borrowing instrument is provided for under the Technological Universities Act 2018, as the Chairman will be aware, but it has not been activated. There is an openness to it, and that is what has been indicated. However, the reason I mention the cost-rental model in my piece is that the metrics have now changed and to make this sustainable will require Government support. That is essentially the issue for us.

The Senator asked about the impact of a reduction in the student contribution. At the moment we are looking for extra places and all of those possibilities go if the student contribution is reduced. I referred to the three-legged stool that we have always been working to, and if we take money out of one, I fully agree with the Senator that it must be replaced from elsewhere. Reference was made to the level of services that we offer students. We have seen, for example, through the pandemic the use of caring services, mental health services and so on. In fairness, the Government has been very good in coming in to support that in those one-off pieces but if we take away part of the core funding on this, these things will not be sustainable. I also agree with Mr. Miley that the big hit on this will be the quality of the system. If one loses reputation internationally in this game, it is very difficult to recover it.