Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As I said in reply to a previous contributor, it is a body of work that we are undertaking as a Department in conjunction with the Department of public expenditure and reform and other agencies, including Eurostat. It will have obvious implications. One of the most important things we will do in the short and medium term is to build capacity in our universities, especially our technological universities in the context of their recent upgrade to university status, for the skill sets that are required. That is my primary focus. I know the borrowing framework gets a lot of media traction but aside from that, the most important thing for me from this year's budget is the multi-annual element of the NTF, which will be ramp up substantially from 2025 onwards. There will be considerable opportunities in the technological university sector, not only around investment in infrastructure, including basic scientific equipment, which I spoke about with earlier contributors, but also in accommodation. I will require a piece of legislation to go through the Houses of the Oireachtas with regard to the NTF shortly. I will be seeking the support of this committee and all parties in that regard. The future of the technological university sector should not be viewed through the narrow lens of borrowing capacity and a few other limited issues. I have met representatives of most of the technological universities and they all say that they feel there is a massive amount of positivity towards them. Student numbers and CAO requests are up. The offering of courses they have is changing and I hope to be in a position to change that further in the next couple of weeks. There will be a series of announcements that will be welcome.