Professor Linda Clarke:

I shall address the earlier questions raised by Deputy Martin Ferris. In terms of links with other institutions on both sides of the Border we have links through SCoTENS to other institutions and quite often those projects which have to have Northern and Southern partners will have partners from more than one institution. Therefore, we do have links. I would say that some of our long-standing links have been around home economics with St. Angela's College and other areas of its work. We do have other links and we would seek to enhance links throughout and across this island. We have also got considerable quality assurance links because universities provide quality assurance for each other's courses via the external examiner system. Those are very important in relation to teaching and the quality of teaching and ensuring that quality is maintained.

I wish to address Deputy Seán Conlan's question in relation to links in Monaghan, if we may change counties for a moment. We have links to Monaghan Education Centre where we deliver a part of our masters in education as an out centre and further afield to Athlone, particularly in the area of leadership but we would like to enhance that. We are looking at developing work around TESOL, teaching English to speakers of other languages, in particular, but there are other areas also that we would like to develop with Monaghan and Athlone.