Ms Josephine Feehily:

I am talking first about institutional capacity. It includes, for example, the employment contract which Dr. Prendergast mentioned. If you start at a different place to other institutes of higher education in terms of careers and so on that is a big capacity issue. Research is done by competent qualified people. The employment arrangements militate against us. That is one capacity issue. There is an OECD report pending and I look forward to seeing it.

Another capacity issue relates to the physical set-up. The TUs are clearly very keen to play their part in apprenticeships, for example. That requires physical space, kit and equipment and we do not have enough of that in order to grow the apprenticeship programmes. Therefore there is physical capacity and then employment capacity but there is also the kind of institutional capacity. Governance needs attention. The legislative framework is changing and then there is the existing structures. It is a real step up and challenge for the executive teams to manage across regions. It is just different. You cannot see everything. New structures are needed in order to make sure that the strategy can flow down and that the learnings can flow up in terms of the way the organisation works. The OECD report is supposed to discuss the need for more support structures within the institutions. The support structures are fairly weak. It is very much about building up institutional capacity over time.