Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The submissions of both THEA and the IUA reference the National Training Fund. This is a very important issue. The programme for Government has committed to utilising the National Training Fund surplus. The suspension of EU fiscal rules due to Covid also provided a window of opportunity to do this. This has not happened so far. The reserve was as high as €817 million a year ago and was projected to increase. This money was supposed to be invested in training and education. Do the witnesses believe the National Training Fund should be used to provide core funding rather than the current situation of allocating to higher education through mechanisms such as the human capital initiative?

My next question is on the stark inequalities that were exposed again in the CSO figures last week. The gap between the northern and western regions and the national average is now estimated to be three times higher than it was a decade ago. That is disgraceful. Underinvestment in key infrastructural assets is likely to have contributed to the rising disparities. The economist John Daly has looked at further education. He says that higher education institutes based in the northern and western regions on average received capital funding of €316 per undergraduate enrolled between 2010 and 2020. This was below the corresponding national figure of €375. Capital investment in the same regions was below the State average in eight out of the past ten years. What needs to be done in the northern and western regions to address this disparity? I very much welcome the Atlantic Technological University. How much funding will have to be weighted? We need positive discrimination to address the imbalance.