Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate it. My next question is on student accommodation, which is a big issue across the country. There was good news recently in respect of three campuses. I have spoken to the Minister previously about my hopes for the likes of South East Technological University, SETU. I am sure the Chair shares those hopes; he has a track record on the issue. I am interested to know where we are going with that.

On subhead C4, which is the programme for research in third level institutions, I am slightly dismayed to see the allocation fall by -17%. This provision covers Science Foundation Ireland, SFI, and so on. I suspect the slack here has been taken up elsewhere. This is particularly pertinent because we were talking in the Dáil earlier today about the establishment of the new research agency, to be known as Taighde Éireann. Why is there such a fall in funding under this programme head?

A new metric is being included under lifelong learning, which is the percentage of 25- to 64-year-olds in lifelong learning. We have spoken about this previously. Ireland is very much mediocre in this area. Whereas we perform at or close to the top under most of the OECD's education metrics, when it comes to lifelong learning, we are very much mid-pack. Many of us here would like to see the Government pushing on with that. What targets are being applied in this area, where do we hope to get to and what is the plan to get there?