Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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Go raibh maith agat Cathaoirleach. I welcome our guests. This is a really good opportunity to discuss what we need to discuss here. Written across all three opening statements is the vision that the chairpersons have for the opportunities presented and the collective responsibility on us all to make sure that those visions and opportunities are maximised. We are on the right road but we will have a deeper dig now into how we might do that. How concerned are the chairpersons by the fact that the future funding announcement made no mention of reforming the funding model or addressing the two-tier funding system in higher education? The 60-40 split will still remain, rather than a 50-50 split.

Mr. Deenihan talked about how traditional universities are incentivised to increase places and then they get more funding per student. It is my understanding that all institutes of higher education are allocated a share of the overall funding envelope based on the number of students enrolled so the more students they have, the larger their share. However, more students in the system overall means less funding per student, in the way that it is done. I would like to give Mr. Deenihan an opportunity to expand on that because it is a matter of concern. There was an announcement recently that there will be more places provided again this year and while that is fine, if it is not underpinned with adequate resources per student then we are not setting ourselves up for success. I ask Mr. Deenihan to elaborate on his point and to explain how the system works differently for the TUs as compared with the traditional universities. I have a few more questions but I ask Mr. Deenihan to address that first.