James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Senator for hosting me at those Limerick institutions. They were very productive visits and spanned quite well the entire spectrum, from the hospitality education at the Roxborough ETB right through to immersive bioscience degree, a very commericalised, high-end research piece. Regarding multi-annual funding, there are a couple of ways I can answer this question. My Department receives annual funding from the Department of public expenditure so we are in the annual cycle ourselves. However, there are a number of programmes which I would tend to frame on a multi-annual basis. The new research initiative I spoke about earlier, which is akin to the old programme for research in third level institutions, PRTLI, will be a competitive research fund across the State. The intention is for that to be a multi-annual fund. It is still a work in progress but it is not envisaged as something that would be drawn down every year, rather, it would span a couple of years, in line with the national development plan. There is also the National Training Fund, NTF. I spoke earlier about how I am bringing legislation through the Dáil at the earliest opportunity to unlock this fund. There will be a commitment of an additional €150 million per annum for the higher education institutions. This is repeated spending that will be available every year. I hope that is of some assistance and comfort.

Regarding the TU professorships, I am working on this and I hope to have it before Cabinet before the summer recess. There is a bit more to go on the TU borrowing issue because there are different levels of maturity or readiness in different institutions. Whether they all jump together or not has to be considered as well. We will come back to that.