Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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Thank you Deputy. The previous Government asked Dr. Colin Hunt to head up a national review committee on a strategy for higher education and it published its report in January 2011. The report was finished in August but it got delayed for a variety of reasons. I was in opposition at the time but I welcomed the report. It was a very useful piece of work and while I did not necessarily agree with everything that was in it I was certainly not going to commission another report if I had responsibility for education. We had to get on with the job of modernising third level education.

What has happened since then is that there has been a very significant modernisation and reform in initial teacher education. There were 19 institutions delivering education for teachers, mostly owned for historical reasons by religious organisations. They have been reconfigured into six clusters and are proceeding to integrate and to rationalise and improve. The most advanced is St. Patrick's in Drumcondra, which has linked up with DCU, Mater Dei and the Church of Ireland College of Education. The 14 institutes of technology were asked to envisage where they would see themselves in the future and that report has recently been published. Three colleges, the institutes of Technology in Galway, Sligo and Letterkenny, have decided to form an alliance which may evolve into something more than that and they are now proposing how they will do that. They will report back to the HEA. Three clusters of IOTs have decided they would like to aspire to become a technological university and meet the criteria set out by the HEA in a separate publication. The first is DIT in Dublin with both Blanchardstown and Tallaght coming together to merge into a single entity and to move to improve their operational performance to the point at which they would be recognised as a technological university and meet these international criteria to which the Deputy referred. Kerry and Cork, CIT and Tralee Institute of Technology, have come together and indicated they would like to become a technological university and they have until Christmas to indicate to the HEA how they propose to meet the criteria and do that journey. Likewise Carlow IT and Waterford IT have said something very similar. We will await to see what operational plan they propose with regard to reaching the standard of the threshold set for them. The remaining ITs in Athlone and Dundalk have entered into structured relationships - Athlone has a structured relationship to Maynooth and Dundalk to DCU on how they would co-operate. Limerick IT has decided it wants to stay as it is and not change but to consolidate its own operation.

It is important to understand that whereas we fund the primary and second level education at 100%, much of the funding of third level education comes from other sources, from research grants, donations of one kind or another. For example UCD and Trinity would get at least 40% of their income from sources other than what is set out in the Estimates. That needs to be understood. The rationalisation of the 14 IOTs and rationalisation within the universities through regional clusters, which is another component of the Hunt report, will provide some savings or reveal overlapping and duplication. I want to see the picture before we start looking at making additional resources available for the third level institutions.

There is no doubt that the third level sector is facing a financial challenge and for that purpose I have started a sustainability programme. We are looking at the issue of sustainability.

First, I want to see what rationalisation and efficiencies we can get, now that modern technology and transportation links and other aspects of the improvement in our country's infrastructure can be used. For example, while every institute of technology may need to have an engineering department, it is possible we could consider specialisation of one type of engineering in one institution as against another. If, for example, in the modern languages sector in the universities, Galway, Limerick and Cork had French, German and Spanish departments, it could be decided that if one wanted to do a masters in any one of those languages, it would be done in a particular university. Each of the universities in question could offer a masters in one of those languages. That is the kind of proposal we should consider.

I am not a professional educationalist and there may be arguments as to why that is not the way to do it. However, people now have the opportunity and possibility, through distance learning and better travel links, of exercising those kinds of options and getting those kinds of efficiencies. Until such time as we see what the real operating cost base is of a modernised infrastructure of third level colleges, universities, institutes of technology and related colleges, we will not decide on funding. I want to see that platform first and will then look at funding and what needs to be done about it.

The one change I have made - reference was made to it - is that the registration fee will rise from €2,000 to €3,000 over four years, ending in 2015 at €3,000. The increment is €250 each year.