Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for coming in and for outlining their work. I have a couple of practical questions, particularly for Ms Ringwood and Ms Devitt, regarding the practicalities of some of the business models. Like Deputy Ó Cathasaigh asked, can they give us some examples? If they are starting to work with a business, how many meetings would they tend to have with a business from the point of having identified them as a willing business partner about the practicalities of embedding a student in that business? What questions do people ask? What are their concerns? In this committee, we do not see anything wrong with asking questions. We ourselves did quite a lot of training before we started so that we would have the right questions and we would inform ourselves. It is a perfectly normal, natural thing to do. What are the concerns that people have? We feel that we might be able to imagine them, but what is their practical experience? They clearly have extraordinary momentum in respect of the business partners that are signing up with them. There are well over 40 or 45. Is that the universe or do some of those organisations have multiple students? Have all of those organisations stuck with the programme? Has there been any level of attrition with students coming out or with people being replaced? What does that represent?

I am interested in the mechanism for spreading it to the other universities, as has been stated by their colleagues. We might discuss with this with SOLAS or the Minister, who will be here later on. Can the witnesses tell us the practical story?