Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Unless the committee wishes it to be otherwise, I am going to be very brief because it has my opening statement and I would rather get into the back-and-forth exchange on the issues. Today, we published details of the expression of interest process in respect of the Higher Education Authority, HEA. This was a major body of work and everyone has worked so hard on getting us to this point. I thank the HEA. We are trying to move beyond the annual conversation concerning the scramble for additional college places in order to have a more strategic look at where we could get to in terms of the capacity of higher education in key areas, especially those relating to public services. We have started with health, in respect of medicine, nursing, dentistry and pharmacy, and with veterinary medicine.

I am pleased that we have seen the system respond, and respond well, with more than 11 institutions now generating interesting projects in this context. Ultimately, this endeavour could create around 5,000 additional enrolments. I refer as well to the opportunity to create new veterinary schools in the regions. The idea that the only veterinary school, which is a very good one and of which we are very proud, is in south County Dublin probably jars with many people in rural and regional Ireland, to be quite frank. We have an excellent school in University College Dublin, UCD, but real challenges are being faced by rural and regional Ireland and we must explore how we can examine this aspect as well. We have many young people going abroad to study veterinary medicine annually. At least a couple of hundred students are heading abroad, mainly to the eastern parts of the European Union. The EU plays an important part concerning our infrastructure, but at the same time we want to be able to provide capacity here. We need to do more in this context, so I am pleased to publish what I think is an exciting plan to expand medicine, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy and veterinary medicine.

We now intend to undertake a similar process regarding therapies, especially those for children with disabilities. The focus will be on speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and other key areas in this regard. Hopefully, we can kick this process off in early September. I look forward to working on this with the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy O'Gorman, and the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte. Basically, we are trying to break the cycle of having annual conversations about what we can do in this regard and turn the conversation instead into one more concerned with exploring where we can get to. I am looking forward to this. The funding of these endeavours will become a part of the conversation around the Estimates and the national development plan.

As I told Deputy Mairéad Farrell, I will be announcing tomorrow how we will move forward on the construction of student accommodation for our technological universities sector. With the exception of the Waterford campus in Deputy Ó Cathasaigh's constituency, no technological university has ever built one student bed. We must move beyond this situation and exciting plans are already coming forward in this regard. Many of the technological universities need capacity and assistance to allow them to come up with these plans. We have allocated €1 million to bring in external assistance to help them to get plans ready so we can start having conversations about moving these plans forward next year too. I am also looking forward to this endeavour.

Turning to pathways to learning, as the committee will know I want to provide opportunities for people to gain entry to college outside the Central Application Office, CAO, system and outside the points race. We have already launched several programmes where students will start their degrees in further education institutions and then complete them at a university. We will be opening these programmes for applications in the coming weeks as well.

Moving onto a national review of State supports for PhD researchers, I brought this to the Cabinet yesterday. It will be published early next week. It is the first report of several, because this review has gone into quite a lot of detail as the reviewers have delved into their work. The first report will focus on financial support issues, particularly stipends, facing non-EEA students in Ireland and career pathways. I look forward to discussing this review with the committee, especially in the context of our Impact 2030 research and innovation strategy.

Much of the discussion we had in the Dáil last night focused on the cost of education and how we can support students and their families. I confirm that I will be bringing a cost of education paper to the Government over the summer. This will show the options concerning what we could do in the budget. We have been doing this for tax and social welfare spending for several years. I am eager that we will also do this in respect of examining how we could help students and their families with the cost of education and what the options are in this regard. We can then have an honest and informed debate as well. I know this committee is considering the proposed research and innovation Bill 2023. I thank the members for the work they have done on this. I believe the pre-legislative scrutiny report on this Bill is due to be published shortly and I am looking forward to seeing the outcome of this process.