Dr. Brendan Murphy:

I thank Senator Clune and Deputy Calleary for their kind words and their engagement. In some ways, we are always surprised because we regard engagement as built into the DNA of ITs. It is what we are supposed to do and what we hope we do. We recognise teaching and learning, innovation, research and engagement with industry at all levels. People have concentrated on the level 8 conversion but we operate at all levels from level 6, the higher certificate, up to level 10.

With regard to active engagement with industry, industry engages with us in course development, updating and developing new courses, providing lecturers in specialised areas where we may not have that specialisation, and providing work placements and internships, as we have seen in many of the conversion programmes. It is a co-ordinated effort, part of which is linked back to the IDA, because we are conscious that we are part of the IDA's mission to go out, sell and attract. All of us tend to work with regional IDA offices, which are intimately familiar with what we can do. If there is a good prospect, we will discuss with officials how we can upskill, train and supply what is needed. That has worked successfully, as evidenced by FDI.

As industry and ICT, in particular, has become more sophisticated, that engagement has changed from upskilling, continuing professional development and providing new graduates to innovation and research. Nowadays, the forefront of research very often is not within higher education in ICT, it is within the industry itself. The industry operates on much different timescales.

It is also much more protective of its intellectual property so it cannot be measured by the research metrics of publication, etc., and we are very conscious of that.

We are cognisant that we will offer the skills programmes at level 6 and will also work with our further education suppliers in order to allow people to progress from FETAC into higher education as such. With the development of SOLAS and with the education and training boards we will see a much closer progression as such built. However, it does exist and should exist.

On the question of guidance counsellors, as with the HEA, one does not like to be drawn into another sector and making comments and criticisms. Members will see from our presentation that we were very conscious that guidance counsellors can describe what an ICT career is like, but getting the student to go out and see what an ICT environment means. Having professionals from the ICT industry come into the schools is the best way to supplement real guidance. It is impractical to expect any guidance counsellor to be an expert in the myriad of careers that students may progress to pursue.

Like DIT, CIT would be a big provider to people to the construction area. The Deputy is correct in pointing to a 50% to 60% fall-off in entry the construction programmes. Internally we are trying to maintain those programmes because as the Deputy mentioned, there could be shortages down the road. Closing programmes is not an option and is not a sensible long-term strategy, so we want to stay there. We also have to deal with redeploying our staff. As I am sure many other institutions have done, we have gone into the area of sustainable technologies and energy which are quite closely related to construction on the basis that there will be an industry demand for refit. We try to redeploy and we have also tried to stay there because we believe there will be shortages in the longer term.

I will ask my colleague to comment on the language issues and the all-Ireland issues.