Mr. Tom Boland:

The accolades heaped on the institutes of technology are well deserved. The sector has unquestionably been one of the great successes of the Irish higher education system and has contributed significantly to meeting skills needs in the economy. However, that praise should not come at the expense of the universities. The country has been served well by an element that we need to retain, namely, a diverse system of institutions. I mean "diverse" in terms of the types of outcome they achieve for their graduates and the types of people they attract. To praise the one should not be to take from the other. The two sectors are important sides of the same coin, but the higher education strategy challenges them to work together better so that the best of both sectors can be harnessed, particularly in terms of addressing their regions' needs and the wide range of demand from level 6 to level 10. The institutes of technology have done well, but the universities are no slouches in this space either.

I will touch on the question of learning Irish and other languages briefly. It is a policy minefield. I am not an educationalist, but the key element in learning Irish seems to be an incentive. If one does not see the need for or value of learning a language and one does not use it, there is no incentive to excel in learning it.