Mr. Michael Kelly:

Let us examine the evidence. The evidence on which I rely comes from the report I mentioned in my statement, which comes from examining the experience of this type of process across the EU during the past 15 years. My interpretation of the evidence is that the rationale for working with the merging and consolidation of institutes is not about knocking things together but building stronger capability. It is through, for example, cross-disciplinarity, multi-disciplinarity, stronger quality processes and so on in the larger institution that we can achieve, not just efficiency gain, which should be part of the agenda, but also a step change in quality of outcomes in terms of the student experience, the quality of graduates, research excellence and the engagement the institutions have with their local communities and in responding to real needs.

When we start from there, the other message that comes through in the evidence is that one pays for this sooner or later, at the start or in lower-than-expected quality outcomes later. When we put a university brand on any Irish institution, we need to do it with great care, and this is reflected in the standard, in the very exacting designation criteria, for example. This also needs to be reflected in the preparation we put in. In the Dublin context, we have taken three years thinking it through and beginning to action some of the pieces of it. It will take much investment, and although finding this investment within the overall higher education budget is challenging, we cannot rely on institutions to find the great majority of what needs to be invested from existing pools, given that they would have to take it out of something that is already happening.