Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Just to press the same point, we assumed that the HEA had a specific remit which appears not to be the case. There is a gap the institutional oversight structures and this committee appears to be the final point at which the institutions can be held to account. The problem is that we could spend a small fortune on the well-known organisations that crop up here all the time. There are four or five whose names crop up all the time. This is costing money, by virtue of the fact that it is an historical look-back on things that have gone wrong but it is also undermining the institutions themselves. If people think that there is no proper oversight, that prompts behaviour, which we end up having to look at retrospectively rather than preventing such behaviour. We must get to the root cause of this because the entire sector is featuring too prominently. We must explore this issue with the Department of Education and Skills as much as with the HEA.