Mr. Paul Hannigan:

I will follow up on that point. The cluster has just put in place a competition for a cross-Border engagement officer to do exactly what the Deputy talked about, namely, to identify the obstacles and remove them among the four partners in the north-west tertiary education cluster. If that happens and it works, there is no reason that approach could not be used elsewhere as well. The four members of the cluster have come together and the person who will be appointed, hopefully in the next fortnight or so, will report to all four members of the cluster rather than one institution. Therefore, there is a responsibility on them to identify where there are obstacles for each of the four partners. That is very important to how we move it forward. We can do that and make the outcomes available to others in the university system. It applies to everybody. If we can simplify the situation, identify the obstacles and provide ways of removing them, that will be a good piece of work. This post has been put in place for a 12-month period to trial it, and to see whether it works and has an impact. That is a direct outcome from the work of the north-west tertiary education cluster.

To go back to the Deputy's point about sub-degree work, in the past and currently, all the further education colleges in Northern Ireland had higher education provision to a certain level. Students would then proceed to the University of Ulster or Queen's University Belfast to finish their qualifications. We specifically identified with North West Regional College where it did not have progression routes for students. If they did not have a progression route into the University of Ulster in Derry, we offered the progression route in Letterkenny. We therefore created a flow of students coming across the Border from Northern Ireland into the Republic to top off their degree programmes.

That has worked effectively in several areas and it can be expanded to others. We are currently considering the area of electric vehicles. Amazingly, the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland has come on board to fund that in recent weeks. We have put a bridging programme in place to allow students to come from Northern Ireland, totally funded, through a programme provided by us and the North West Regional College to move into a degree programme in ATU Donegal. These things are possible. If one gets the right people together in the right place at the right time, one can make it work. Through the north west tertiary education cluster, we are trying to continue to promote good practice and the best way forward. We are running on fumes at the moment in terms of making this happen, however. This was set up initially back in 2018. It was funded through the HEA landscape funding and additional funding came through in the second phase of that. We also received funding from the technological university transformation fund, TUTF, as the ATU was established. We need bridging funding to keep the programme and the momentum around it going. As the person with responsibility for cross-Border collaboration from the university's perspective, I am conscious that this needs to be a central plank of our ongoing strategy. The university is very committed to that and the work of the cluster will drive that activity.