Mr. Denis Cummins:

I will address the questions on scholarships and misperceptions and Mr. Hannigan can address the other questions. In one sense, a scheme is already in place, namely, the Erasmus programme for student mobility across Europe. My own institution hosts up to 200 students at any one time from partner universities in France, Germany, Finland and Spain. I am not aware of a single exchange with Northern Ireland, however. It may be a case of making better use of the Erasmus programme rather than funding a new scholarship. I would prefer to target scholarships at low income students and, in the case of Dundalk, I would love to see students coming from the Protestant community in Northern Ireland. At present we have approximately 50 students out of 5,000, which is a small drop in the ocean. As far as I know all of them are from Nationalist backgrounds. This year for the first time in our history a Protestant school visited during our annual open day. The point was made that Protestants avail of higher education to a much lesser extent than the Nationalist community. I would like to increase their participation as a way of building mutual understanding.