Mr. Ian McKenna:

Rather than giving a whole lot of statistics, with the risk of some possible discrepancies between them, I propose to highlight a number of key aspects from which we take comfort. We absolutely share the sentiments expressed by Ms Cousins regarding the strong desire for collaboration that exists between the North and the South. Like Ms Cousins, we have sourced data from the Higher Educations Statistics Agency in the UK, which looks after the entire gamut of statistics across that jurisdiction. We have also sourced some data from the HEA. We were anxious to get a sense not just of North-South mobility but also east-west mobility, which likewise impinges and impacts on decisions made by students.

If we focus exclusively on the mobility and student flows that exist between North and South we find that overall it is quite stable. There is a small decline in the number of students heading North but we have seen an increase in students coming from Northern Ireland. When we look at the east-west and North-South flows together, we see that 22% of Irish students head North. Over the four-year period from 2017-2018 through to 2020-2021, there was a 4% decline in undergraduate trends. We also noticed that postgraduate numbers increased by 11%. When we looked at students coming from Northern Ireland to institutions such as UCD and Trinity over the same time period, we saw an increase in the cohort of Northern Ireland students. It was quite substantial at 68%. This was from a relatively small base but the increase is substantial.

With regard to undergraduate numbers, 75% of all students moving east-west and North-South are from Northern Ireland in particular. This number saw an increase of 45% over the same period. With regard to postgraduate numbers, 53% came from Northern Ireland and there was an increase of 52%. We are seeing positive trends in terms of mobility. As I have said, we have taken notice of the fact that the number of students heading North has plateaued. At the same time, it is still a positive given the decline that had been happening previously.

Much of our energy is going into trying to find out precisely what is informing these trends and what is informing student choices as they head towards institutions in the North or move between east and west. We have worked very closely with the shared island unit in the Department of the Taoiseach. It has worked with us to commission qualitative work from the ESRI that will look at the reasons students make decisions. When we looked at the overall trend in course choices being pursued we saw they fell primarily in health sciences, such as occupational therapy, physical therapy and nursing. Medicine also featured quite highly, along with social science, business and management and education and training. When we look at the corollary in the CAO system these courses tend to require relatively high points. This could inform some of the decisions students are making.

There are other aspects that are very important to the committee's discussion. Recently the North West Strategic Growth Partnership, which was a relatively informal body established with the support of the Department of the Taoiseach, established the north-west tertiary education cluster. This will involve substantial collaboration among all four institutes and education and training providers in the north west.

We have also had research calls that were oversubscribed. This is a very positive indication of the nature and the desire for collaboration that exists between institutions North and South. Of course we continue to work on the various commitments in New Decade, New Approach in terms of capital investment in the University of Ulster's Derry campus. A host of other engagements are also taking place. PEACE PLUS offers us an opportunity for further collaboration between both jurisdictions. We are also working on the Erasmus process for Northern Ireland students, with a view to having it in place for next September. We are working very closely with Queen's University Belfast and the University of Ulster on pursuing the possibility of using any spare capacity that may exist in medical places to assist in our own strategy.