Dr. Bryan Maguire:

I thank the Chair and members. When QQI was established in 2012, we launched a comprehensive policy development programme to implement all the functions laid out in the Qualifications and Quality Assurance (Education and Training) Act 2012. It became evident, however, that there were gaps in the Act which impeded QQI from fulfilling its intended role in relation to the quality assurance of the further and higher education sector and the English language sector. We engaged with the Department at an early date to discuss the changes necessary to make QQI fully operational. The amendments proposed in the 2018 Bill are intended to enable QQI to discharge all its functions and respond to newly emerging threats. Many of the amendments proposed were informed by consultation with QQI stakeholders.

Education and training in Ireland operate within an international environment. Students come from overseas for English language and higher education programmes; Irish graduates take their qualifications abroad; Irish providers seek to offer qualifications of overseas awarding bodies; and persons from outside the State own and operate schools in this country. Those are all good things. Unfortunately, it is also the case that international networks of crooks facilitate cheating in our institutions through Internet-based essay mills. This international context provides one of the common threads motivating these amendments. Like its peer agencies in other jurisdictions, with which we are in frequent contact, QQI needs additional powers to secure the quality of Irish education and the standards of qualifications.

Since its launch over 15 years ago, the national framework of qualifications has become recognised at home and abroad as signifying worthwhile qualifications offered by quality assured providers. Inclusion in the national framework gives reassurance to learners, funders and other regulators that an award can be trusted. This legislation gives QQI powers to extend that recognition to additional awarding bodies and their associated providers. It also strengthens QQI's hand to test the good intentions of private providers and awarding bodies, making sure that they are fit and proper persons with appropriate resources to carry out education and training, whether for Irish students or international students, and that they have demonstrated compliance with relevant laws, including those relating to the employment of staff. QQI welcomes the provisions that give legal clarity to the arrangements whereby any awarding body's qualifications, whether new or existing, are to be included in the framework.

Many providers of education and training are in the private sector. In the past, students have been left stranded when providers have suddenly gone out of business. In some cases, these closures may have been due to the actions of unscrupulous providers, but any business venture carries the risk of failure due to fluctuations in trading conditions. Even with closer scrutiny of the providers by QQI, as enabled by this Bill, private schools may fail in the future. The learner protection fund to be operated by QQI will ensure that it is the private sector educational industry as a whole, rather than the individual learners in the schools affected or the Exchequer, that bears the cost of any such failure.

We welcome this Bill and look forward to playing our part in implementing it when it is passed.