Dr. Patrick Prendergast:

I endorse what has been said about apprenticeships.

On the Deputy's question, there is an issue, which our governing board has only briefly discussed, regarding the academic contract in TUs. If we are to compete successfully for research funding, we probably have to be able to offer different kinds of academic contracts from the ones we can offer at the moment. That is a constraint that we are applying to ourselves in the TU system. We would like the HEA and the Department to consider a different kind of academic contract to free us up to engage in more research and innovative activity.