Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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It is all right.

Like others, I welcome the Minister of State here today. This is an enormously important Bill for the institutes of technology around the country, for the Dublin Institute of Technology and the Cork Institute of Technology which are two of the larger institutes of technology and where mergers with other institutes of technology have also been part of the proposals. As someone who worked for a significant period of time as a senior lecturer in the Dublin Institute of Technology, I was heavily involved in the original move to the concept of technological universities and I want to declare my interest.

The issues for the institute of technology sector are that nowadays, the prerequisite is to have something that has very clearly a university status. The work that is done in the colleges, in terms of allowing access to third level education all over Ireland, is an important social asset in this country but it is also important to employers in terms of identifying people who will have, in particular, not only broad educational development but professional development, for example, in engineering, in accounting and in other specific professional fields. That has always been recognised as a strong merit point with technological universities.

I want to mention a couple of issues which I hope the Minister of State will address in the course of the discussion on this. I note there are a number of amendments being put forward on the status of the trade unions in the governance of the university and the students union.