Mr. Tom Boland:

I hope to address all those questions with the assistance of my colleagues, as well as any supplementary questions where I have overlooked something. A good starting point is with Deputy McConalogue's issues regarding funding because ultimately, it is the issue that underpins just about everything. For a number of years - for all the reasons of which we are aware - the resource per student has been falling dramatically. Although it is very hard to set it out in real empirical terms, there is a connection between the resource per student available and the quality of outcomes. At present, we are not seeing evidence of significant damage to quality.

What tends to happen in a situation like that is that one does not see the damage to quality until it is done. Unwinding that then becomes the problem.

However, we are seeing very clearly, from student surveys for instance, that there is a deterioration in the quality of the student experience in higher education. That does not involve students having a good time. A very concrete example is the perception of students, which is a reality for them, of there being much less connection between academic staff and the student. It is very important for all students, in particular for those who are weaker academically, that they are mentored through the higher education system. Simply because of a lack of resources or resources being stretched, and the number of students involved, there is less of that happening.

Taken over a long period of time, if a student does not get that kind of mentoring, inevitably it will eat away at the quality of the graduates from our sector. Above all things, Ireland needs to avoid a situation where the quality of our graduates is called into question, nationally or internationally. They are probably our largest resource as a country. That is the kind of dynamic which is happening.

A Deputy asked why it has not been dealt with sooner. To be frank, it is a very difficult issue. Setting up the group under Peter Cassells is an excellent initiative. I am a member of the group. The process is taking some time because the group is not jumping into the options. It is taking an approach which involves asking why higher education is important and what it contributes. It is trying to build up a broader understanding, across all stakeholders, of the importance and value of higher education and why it should be funded, however that funding is to be provided.

The HEA provided one report to the then Minister some five years ago. We were not then in the space of the very severe constraints on public funding, constraints which are likely to continue for quite a number of years. At the time our approach was to outline our funding in regard to international comparisons. We need to go much deeper and develop a coalition of understanding as to why higher education is important and how we might fund it.

As I highlighted in my opening statement, in the meantime we have to be concerned because numbers are growing - they need to grow - yet resources are not available. A couple of things might help. I fully accept the challenges to the Government, but it would help if there were no further cuts to the higher education budget. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has signalled that there was some adjustment to the employment control framework. This is important because rather than giving more money to institutions, sometimes one can get great efficiencies and impact from existing resources by giving them more freedom.

I understand the purpose of the employment control framework, but it is time to move away from a crude control of numbers and give institutions more freedom in terms of how to structure their human resources within a budget and safeguards for public finances now and in the future. In that context, the institutions should have more flexibility around voluntary redundancy schemes, because it would give them more flexibility in regard to how they manage their staff.

We would advocate considering some of those issues in the short term. Another area which is quite important concerns allowing institutions to be more entrepreneurial, in other words, to make money for themselves. There is a provision for universities in terms of a framework whereby they can set up companies and pay academic staff some additional pay to support the activities of that company.

A good example is where a university has a business school which is providing programmes in China and is earning a significant amount of funding from that activity. It is no good for the university to employ Chinese staff to provide the courses in China because the reason the Chinese are interested in the programme is because it is an Irish university programme. They have to have significant involvement by Irish academics, but at the same time they have their jobs at home.

The corporations framework, as it is known, will have given some freedom to the universities in that regard. It allows them to leverage their resources, such as highly qualified academic staff, to earn revenue. In broad terms, they are some of the short-term and long-term areas where we would suggest some freedoms for the sector to the Departments of Education and Skills and Public Expenditure and Reform.

I will seek to address some of the other issues. I totally agree with Senator Ó Clochartaigh about the importance of access in terms of the regional dispersal of institutions. One of the noted successes in our higher education system is the regional technical colleges, as they initially were, and the institutes of technology. There is absolutely no intention to unsettle or dismantle that. It is a well-recognised aspect of our system. We are currently holding meetings with the institutions and regional clusters.

We had a meeting on Monday with the Dublin Institute of Technology, IT Tallaght and IT Blanchardstown. A very fundamental part of their approach to coming together as a single institution is that each campus will be a complete campus, not in the sense of providing the full suite of academic programmes but in terms of all of the student services. It is important to have fully equipped campuses in the regions.