Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 22 March 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills

Future Funding of Higher Education: Discussion (Resumed)

Mr. Tim Horgan:

There is no formal mechanism but we have explored the possibility of developing laboratories for very specific industries. Again, we have been challenged because we would have to put up some of that funding ourselves and we do not have it. We have gone looking for funding. Maybe we should go again and look for 100% funding. It is very difficult, however, to sell that to industry when it looks at our plans and we do not have a clear view around the State funding element. Much of the infrastructure would need to change before we could get to that point. We need some capital investment. Once we get capital investment, there would be a significant opportunity for us, and we have discussed this, to say to those companies there would be an opportunity to go even further and increase the skill sets based on the needs of those companies in the next five to ten years.