Dr. Deirdre Lillis:

Again, this agency will work in a system. There are a number of initiatives and programmes under way within the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science in the development of the technological university sector and the Higher Education Authority, HEA, has a very large role to play in this. It is key to the overall plans. This agency will award competitive funding which will sit on top of that wider system and the technological universities will be fully able to apply and compete for that. Much of the capacity development work will still take place through the HEA and there is a piece around bringing research capacity in the technological universities up in a way that suits their regions rather than trying to create copies of other universities. They have very strong regional remits which is something we are very mindful of and upon which we will be working closely with the HEA.