James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)

I do not know about the Senator's former career but I know he is a man of many talents and has a great interest in agriculture. I agree with him that there are great opportunities in agricultural colleges. I am thinking of Kildalton. The veterinary courses we are rolling out in ATU and SETU will utilise them - hopefully, to their fullest. I am meeting with representatives from SETU today and have visited ATU previously. I am really keen that these veterinary courses get rolled out. September 2026 is the target. They should take full advantage of agricultural colleges, some of which are in my constituency. Usage of them could really be optimised. There are courses across agriculture. My daughter is an agricultural science student. She is in UCD studying the equine science aspect of it and I see that every day. It is a very practical course. UCD Lyons Farm is up the road from me in Kildare. There are colleges, farms and centres of excellence around the country that could usefully be deployed. Teagasc probably has a greater role than I do. It probably comes under the remit of the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine. I will engage with the Minister on some of the synergies where we can work together and look at what further leverage we can get. In many ways, it is about taking the assets and the real estate we have in terms of the different portfolios of agricultural colleges around the country and seeing how we can put them to work for students and the educational landscape.

Regarding the situation of one lecture per day, I have also seen that in student timetables. I have had discussions with some of the colleges on that. The Senator very sensibly raised the possibility of compressing courses. If there is one lecture at 11 a.m. on Friday, an awful lot of students, particularly in today's world, will say "I'm going to go to work. I'm not going to be a day's pay down for the sake of one lecture". They will say that they are not going to commute to Dublin, Limerick or wherever the case may be so there is a low attendance rate for those lectures. Yes, remote learning could be used. This is something we have all got used to in recent years. However, even if remote learning is extremely useful to enable people to participate who might otherwise struggle because of care duties or family commitments, ultimately, we want social interaction. We want people go into colleges and benefit from that engagement and student experience. Maybe timetabling could be done in a way that avoids those situations where there is an orphaned class at the end of the week. There is also a need for time to reflect, absorb, have conversations outside class and got to the library. I hear what the Senator is saying and it will be part of my conversations with the different colleges. There are a number of courses that would not prepared to do so but from my review of courses, there are some, particularly Master's area, where two years could become one year or 18 months so that is something to look at.

Regarding transport, a technological university pilot project is under way with €500,000 funding committed by my Department. The aim is to see whether we can match student journeys to transport provision to see whether buses could be run. The Senator mentioned Athlone. Perhaps it could go from the train station up to the college. There are different things we could look at doing. I know some colleges already do it. A number of private buses serve Maynooth University for the surrounding areas. There are buses to UCD from the commuter belt as well so there are already a number of private sector providers getting into that space but it is certainly something we are proactively exploring, particularly with the technological universities of which TUS Athlone would be one, and we will continue to look at that.