Mr. Martin McKendry:

I thank the Senator for her comments. I will take it in two areas. It is a policy agenda within the department. It is strong around our new agricultural policy, our food strategy framework and our Climate Change Act now as well.

That drives programme development and curriculum development from a CAFRE perspective, and that is linked in with the industry. For example, in regard to the new Climate Change Act, we launched a new honours degree around sustainable agriculture conferred by Ulster University. Our enrolments on that are phenomenally strong. They look strong for the next year or two as well. We have to continue to do that curriculum development. That also impacts on our industry-facing work, which is the other half of the business. That is about being in a position to deliver the messages, and the K-T-innovation around developing a sustainable agricultural and agrifood model going forward. We continue to have to develop our curriculum in line with that.

I also want to pick up on the opportunities actually to work cross-Border on these areas within that K-T-innovation-education space. We have a good collaboration with Teagasc. In fact we have a senior Teagasc team coming up tomorrow for two days. There is real potential to develop that collaboration further in regard to the learning model around the new knowledge we are going to need within agrifood to meet our climate change targets over the next ten, 20 or 30 years. There is a real opportunity to enhance that part of it. There are also opportunities to enhance the student experience. It does not have to be, to pick up on Mr. Soares’s comment around this, short term. It is does not have to be all or nothing. There is a blended approach in terms of shared learning and shared experience for students particularly in the agrifood sector. That is an exciting sector over the next year or two, with a number of problems and issues to be solved.