Mr. Gerry O'Sullivan:

Go raibh míle agaibh, a Chathaoirligh, a Sheanadóirí agus a chairde uilig as ucht an cuireadh. I thank you very much on behalf of the Higher Education Authority for the opportunity to present to the committee some of our observations on the impact of the withdrawal from the European Union of the United Kingdom.

In 1878, the United Kingdom and Ireland were among the first 11 countries to participate in the Erasmus programme and from that day, Ireland has been represented at a national agency level by the Higher Education Authority.

As we know, in 2020, the United Kingdom pulled out of the Erasmus programme but that impact will not be immediate for the reasons that both countries were able to extend the grant agreement that we have with their higher education institutions by different periods as a Covid response. Ireland will be able to take students from and send students to the UK until May of next year. The UK has taken that extension a bit further and it will remain in the programme until May 2023. That was a Covid measure response and I emphasise has nothing to do with the departure of the UK from the European Union.

Ireland's mobility pattern to the UK is significant, and particularly so for a number of institutions. In 2019, a total of 355 students went to the UK on mobility. Of that number, 210, the largest share, went on traineeship, which is the European Erasmus term for internships or placements, as we might better understand them. Of that number, half went to London. London is not only the capital of the UK but is also a global capital and hugely attractive from the point of view of students who want to secure better employment prospects in the future. The significant point here is that 10% of our total student numbers up to 2020 went to the UK.

I mentioned the student study visit. The Erasmus pattern is in two particular areas: study visits, where students will enrol in another university or a higher education institution; and traineeships. One hundred and twenty-nine students went in 2019 to 38 different universities in the UK. That relationship is managed under an inter-institutional agreement. That is a significant measure of the co-operation that exists between our higher education institutions and those in the UK and is indicative also of the trust and co-operation that has been ongoing for 33 years. That will be a significant loss, when it happens in the post-2023 period, for our sector.

Equally, the 210 students going to the UK for traineeship, and almost 50% of them going to London, are drawn heavily from a number of institutions, including: Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, with 39; the University of Limerick, with 29; NUI Galway, 27, Limerick Institute of Technology, 21; the National College of Art and Design, 16; Waterford Institute of Technology, 14; and Technological University, TU, Dublin, 11.

Many of these traineeships are in the areas of hotel management, the hospitality sector, catering, culinary skills, construction, fashion and design. This is valuable experience for every student to have on their CV and it gives connectivity with the world of work in a leading city of the calibre of London, which has the world headquarters of many leading organisations in the various sectors.

The mobility from the UK to Ireland under Erasmus+ is not as large but it is not insignificant, and it has grown from 88 students in 2014 to 110 in 2019. On the island of Ireland, there is also an Erasmus+ dimension because of the existence of two jurisdictions, with more than 600 students from the North of Ireland going on the programme annually. Uniquely among the participating regions of the EU, 68% of its students go on traineeships whereas the European pattern is very much the other way, with 70% going on study visits and 30% on traineeships. Our participation rates from the South are of that order. There are four main providers among the institutions in Northern Ireland, accounting for 96% of total outgoing mobility. Of the 420 students who undertook traineeships in 2019, 66%, or 280, came South, and of that number, nearly two thirds came to Dublin. Therefore, the mobility pattern of Erasmus+ students in Northern Ireland is rather unique. We have a small number, just 37, moving in the other direction, so it affects some institutions but it is not of the same order.

As I come to the conclusion of this part on the Erasmus+ programme, I want to stress that the UK is not going to be eliminated entirely from the programme in the future. Under the present system, Ireland and all other countries in the EU can use 20% of the money we allocate to them for intra-European mobility, so the institutions in Ireland and in other European countries can use that money to send students and staff to what we call partner countries, which is now the designation of the UK. From next year onwards, we will see the return of an action that started in 2015, which is called international credit mobility. This allows us to manage inward and outward student and staff mobility to different parts of the world and, indeed, to all continents. The UK now forms part of a group of countries with Switzerland and the Faroe Islands. They will receive a budget next year and although we do not yet know the amount of that budget, it will support student and staff mobilities in both directions from Ireland and the UK. However, it will not be of a magnitude to sustain the types of mobilities that have been ongoing for 33 years.

The Minister, Deputy Simon Harris, has identified the challenge facing Northern Ireland students and has intimated that the Government will provide financial support for them. That initiative is paused at the moment and it is now due for implementation in September 2022. The management and delivery, and the talks about how that will happen, will resume later this year. While cross-Border student flows are not directly impacted by Brexit, I would draw the attention of the committee to the fact there are about 3,500 students travelling in both directions across the island. Some 1,500 come South from the North, and that has increased from 1,000 at the beginning of the decade. Our figures going North are moving the opposite way but we still have 2,000 students going to institutions in Northern Ireland. Again, it is significant that 50% of those are pursuing postgraduate work.

The area of research is unchanged. Under the EU agreement with the UK, the UK will remain in the Horizon Europe research programme, which is worth €96 billion over the next seven years. In the preliminary period up to the end of last year, a considerable number of conversations had been had on the island between the Royal Irish Academy, the British Council and the Irish Research Council, as well as the Royal Society.

This means that there is quite a high level of understanding as to the importance of research on this island, which is brought home, in particular, by an Irish Research Council fact to the effect that 70% of peer reviewers are UK-based academics. This council has also established a funding programme with the Economic and Social Research Council in the UK fostering relationships across the Ireland-UK landscape in the area of social science. Full degree mobility between Ireland and the UK has not been impacted upon by Brexit, with students from the UK enjoying the same rights and entitlements as Irish students in this country. Equally, Irish students in the UK are treated the same as British students.

Finally, I will refer briefly to the UK Turing programme, which has been developed by the UK in response to the fact it is outside the Erasmus programme. There are significant differences between this programme and what the UK enjoyed under Erasmus, namely, it only supports outbound students from the UK. There is no reciprocal dimension so no inbound supports are provided and it does not cover the area of staff mobility. Institutions in the North of Ireland and other parts of the UK have applied for inclusion under that programme and the decisions will be made known before the end of the summer.