Mr. Tim Conlon:

I thank Deputy Ó Laoghaire for the questions. On the data, I do not have the current position to hand but I will get back to him with a briefing of where we are on the travel, access and participation targets. On the deprivation index data, we are seeing institutions start to use those data. They go right down to almost street level such that we can see the communities students are coming from and the extent to which they access higher education and progress through. Institutions can use those data to identify communities they might not have engaged with or were not aware of to find community leaders to engage with. We are able to track students in terms of their life outcomes. For students from a disadvantaged background, where they get into and through a higher education experience, at ten years post graduation, to use the Tory expression from the UK, things almost level up.

We can see that the impact on people's lives is really significant if we can get to them. Use of the data to target students, communities and areas and to communicate to them, through the schools and elsewhere, the opportunities in further and higher education, as well as in apprenticeships, and to bring them into and through college is the real advantage. The data are fairly new in that we only have them for three or four years but we are already seeing institutions starting to use them to identify what it means for them and how they can target progress more effectively. My colleagues may want to comment on that as well.