Mr. Tony Donohoe:

I will respond to the Deputy's question on the TUs with respect to research. It is right to wait to see what we are dealing with but it was encouraging to see young Ukrainian children in Irish schools. It just shows what is possible. Language is probably the most important element, although during this crisis I have been struck by the Ukrainians' level of proficiency in English. That is where I would target initially until we see what we are dealing with.

On research in the TUs, there is a successor to Innovation 2020. A new research strategy is currently being developed. We should look back on the programme for research in third level institutions, PRTL, which has been in place since 1998, the fifth cycle of which finished a number of years ago. That has successfully supported those doing PhDs and research in third level institutions. That model should be extended to the technological universities. We should explicitly, in terms of incentives, acknowledge the regional focus of the TUs. Mr. Neil McDonnell mentioned we need more applied research and that small firms do not draw down research funding. That is largely true. Some 70% of research funding goes to foreign direct investment, FDI, companies. We need to consider a model that encourages SMEs to engage with the technological universities. We know the best way of increasing research funding is to leverage industry investment. Industry investment in research has increased at a much faster rate than State research in higher education and it accounts for approximately 70% of total research funding in the State. Given the profile of our companies, many of which are knowledge intensive, we need to use that to leverage investment into HEIs and specifically the new TUs.