Dr. Jim Murray:

The key point is that, currently, until the relevant sections of the legislation are commenced, QQI does not have a statutory role to investigate any of these bodies. We have a residual administrative function, which came to us via one of the predecessor agencies, namely, the ACELS inspection scheme, but, as I said in my opening statement, there is no statutory basis for us operating it. We maintain it on a residual basis for the existing members that were part of that scheme, but we have not taken on new members in several years. The aim and focus is to get the new scheme up and running where we will have the statutory authority to go after and investigate rogue operators, as the Chairman quite rightly said we should. That is the reality.

At the moment, we run the residual review service for ACELS members and those inspections are triggered by changes in ownership, in premises and so on, but it is very much a residual function. We do not have any statutory authority and it cannot even be used or linked in to the ILEP regime, which is the current regulatory regime in large measure for international education, including English language education.