Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)

I visited the sites in question. What the ETBs have taken on is very impressive. It is significant because several of us who previously served as local authority members also served on ETBs. The footprint of the ETBs now is colossal. I was chair of Limerick and Clare ETB in 2019, which it has more than doubled in size in the interim. QQI has stakeholder engagement going on at present. It proposes that QQI level 5 healthcare nursing courses will have to double the on-site practical hours from 120 to 240 per annum. This is proving unworkable because most hospital environments cannot take on students in this fashion. They are pulled and dragged in 100 different directions. Doubling up the placement hours just is not an option. We want people in healthcare but we cannot make it such that it becomes impossible or inaccessible. Does the Minister have a view on this?

It is almost a year since the general election took place. There is a commitment in the programme for Government for the mid-west to become a test bed for new forms of aviation technology and that this would be reflected in the third level institutions. In the context of Supplementary Estimate or his plans for 2026, how does the Minister hope to roll this out? Aviation is a very fast-moving sector. The Minister has identified the mid-west, and specifically Shannon, to be a test bed for trialling new technology and upskilling people, but we have not yet heard the detail.