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

I thank the witnesses for the opening statement and, indeed, for this report, which covers this issue very comprehensively. Questions were asked in last week's committee meeting about identifying the push and pull factors in this context. I refer in particular to those four A levels, for example, the timing of offers, etc. I do not wish to rehash that debate because it was well rehearsed last week.

I do, however, wish to interrogate the research a little in terms of what baseline we would expect there to be concerning student mobility. The south east would be a very bad example because we have a lot of student mobility that we might not welcome because a great number of courses that would like to see provided in the region are not provided. This means we have an outflow of young people. Northern Ireland, in a sense, because of the cap the witnesses spoke about, probably has a similar problem. Deputy Farrell talked about people leaving Northern Ireland and staying away. We have a similar problem in the south east. The Cathaoirleach will be well aware of this issue too. People go away for their education, meet their partners and very often it takes them a long time to get back to the south east, if they manage to get back at all. It is exactly the same for Northern Ireland.

Let us compare this situation with that of the Dublin population, where a full suite of courses is available in the area. When I went to college in Cork, I did not hear a lot of Dublin accents down there. I wonder what the outcome would be if we were to undertake that kind of comparison. Do we have a baseline in this regard? In all likelihood, any courses young people in Dublin would be interested in taking are probably available in the city. Do we see more substantial mobility in that population than we are talking about here? I hope the witnesses understand my question. I am probably not phrasing it correctly. What would we expect to see in terms of student mobility in this context?