Mr. Fergal Costello:

In terms of transparency, the HEA has considerable data. We get returns from the institutions in respect of each of the 1,000 or 1,100 courses with details of the number of students in first, second, third and fourth year. We do not publish them because we would just overwhelm people with information. If there are any particular queries we would be happy to follow up on them.

Apprenticeship education is funded almost exclusively through the HEA in institutes of technology with two further education colleges. A very positive aspect is that the progression issue the Chairman mentioned, has got better. There was a time when it was difficult to progress from an apprenticeship qualification into a higher education qualification. While I do not say it is perfect now by any means, we did some work on it last year and a variety of routes and institutions are offering recognition of prior learning and bringing students into second or third year of a higher education qualification. We would hope that sort of seamless progression between sectors would become stronger in years to come.