Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I completely agree. As the Cathaoirleach knows better than most, we have been trying to bring university education into the regions. Even though we have done that, there will still be certain courses for which people will need to go to certain universities to access. I am very conscious of the autonomy of the universities and obviously they decide what courses they provide. They have opportunities in their strategic statements to outline their vision. Sometimes there can be particular issues around placements. It sometimes simply does not work to provide a college course in one location if there is not a matching placement available in the healthcare system there.

My message to all of the institutes is that we will work with them. We have shown promise in that regard today. We will work with a college if there are courses the college believes it could provide to satisfy demand and regional balance. We will work with the college to tease out the various issues. Some of these may be for our Department in terms of cost and some of them may be for other Departments in terms of placements.

The second point is linked. The Cathaoirleach gave the example of TU Dublin. At the moment, TU Dublin does not have any college-owned accommodation. This is not a criticism, by any means. The college has not been empowered to do that until now but we need to fix that. This is one of the biggest higher education institutes, if not the biggest, in the country. It has a state-of-the-art campus. A person would be proud to come to Dublin to study there but it needs accommodation to go with it. Of course, when we invest Government money, which we are now doing for the first time in the history of the State, we demand in return for such investment that a certain amount of the accommodation is ring-fenced at below market rates.

We are open to and willing to support the provision of new courses in new universities where universities have not provided them before if a case can be made that there is demand for the skills in the economy and the region. We are open to working with people and where they have to travel, we want to see purpose-built college-owned, or at least college-accessed, student accommodation at affordable rents.