Dr. Colm O'Reardon:

The Cathaoirleach mentioned the €40 million. An extra €60 million in core funding has gone into next year's budget. On the specific institutions, the Higher Education Authority meets them all regularly and they have an annual budgetary meeting. If a deficit is a planned or projected deficit in a university, and a financial plan is in place, then the HEA will examine that and will look to see whether there is a sense of a plan to bring the institution through that period.

It might be reasonable to have a modest deficit projected, provided that there was a way back to dealing with it. The HEA is very active in talking to the universities regularly about what their funding position is. There is a commitment from Government to continue to increase core funding for the institutions. If any institution finds itself in serious difficulty, then of course the HEA and the Department-----