Mr. Jim Miley:

I think there is a dual impact. In the first instance, and as Dr. Ryan said, the quality of what we provide has been maintained to a great extent. However, our student-staff ratios have slipped down to 23:1 as opposed to the European average of 15:1. That sounds fine and dandy when compared with the ratios in primary and secondary level. In reality, however, the difference in the third level context is tutorials and the way in which teaching is structured. It needs that much more intensive, one-to-one feature. Students are not getting that. That came home to roost particularly in the Covid scenario, when students were operating digitally and they lost a significant component of that. That quality-related issue is the biggest risk. As Dr. Ryan has pointed out, if the quality is lost, one's reputation is lost. It takes not a month or a year to recover that; it takes a decade or more.