John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for being with us. I welcome his presentation. When he said the budget was decided last year and that this is his first chance to make some impression on it, a couple of points stood out for me. The first concerns the targeted measures, which the Minister has always spoken about. He mentioned at the outset how he is increasing funding to ensure access for people with disabilities in the third level sector. Could he give us more information on that? How will the funding be disbursed? How many students will benefit from it? What institutions are advising the Minister that they want the money for the purpose of disability access? We would all welcome it if more institutions came forward to do so.

The other area concerning access, which the Minister mentioned in response to Deputy Feighan, is the SUSI thresholds. How many students will benefit from the changes? What is the increase in the number of pupils who will not have to pay any fees as a result of the increased threshold? The Minister has spoken about targeted intervention to eliminate barriers to ensure those who face barriers can participate in third level education. I realise it is difficult to give numbers because of all the various thresholds, but maybe the Minister could give the number of pupils who have no fees as a result of the income threshold change.

Another area, a very obvious one, is research. In this regard, there may be a departure from previous years. I have not been a member in previous years but will speak from my experience. Under subhead C4 – programme for research in third level institutions – there has been a 141% increase in funding for research. That is very substantial. There was previously a programme whose title, I believe, was the programme for research in third level institutions. Are we initiating that programme again? If so, it is very welcome. It is another mark of what the Minister has said since taking up his role, namely that he wants to see an environment amenable to research and that enables third level institutions to do more. How will third level institutions gain access to the funding available owing to the 141% increase? I hope to see it grow in the coming years.

The Minister announced recently investment in the accelerating research to commercialisation hubs. Is the funding from the programme budget in question or the infrastructure budget? On the infrastructure budget, I noticed a slight, or very marginal, decrease this year. We all know that all educational institutions like to have modern buildings and equipment, so it is a slight concern that there has been a slight reduction for infrastructure development.

On a general point, can the demands that the Department of public expenditure puts on third level institutions regarding the development of infrastructure projects be mitigated somewhat? One institution, which I suppose I should not name, advised me it found proceeding with an infrastructure project extremely frustrating. It said it was asked too often to review what it had done. I am not sure whether this was to reduce costs or otherwise. This seems to be an area of some concern for institutions.

Regarding three other figures that were noteworthy in the Minister’s presentation, I would like him to give some indication as to where the additional expenditure is going. There has been an increase of 183% for miscellaneous grants and service provision for various grant projects identified as a priority. That is a startling increase. Would it be three times the amount of money? It is twice anyway. Could we have information on that? There has been a 20% increase in the international and North–South activities provision to meet costs arising from membership of UNESCO and contribute to the College of Europe and other projects. How is that increase coming about?