Professor Vincent Cunnane:

A Chathaoirligh, Teachtaí agus Seanadóirí, ba mhaith liom buíochas a ghabháil libh as cuireadh a thabhairt dom freastal anseo inniu.

Chair, Deputies, Senators, thank you for the invitation to address the committee today. It is an honour and a welcome opportunity to contribute to the committee's work in shaping Irish higher education policy.

As president of the Technological University of the Shannon, TUS, I lead a young institution that already serves more than 15,000 students across seven campuses in the midlands and midwest. We are deeply embedded in our communities, working with local enterprise, industry, and civic partners to widen participation and strengthen regional development.

TUS is built on a shared set of core values and we seek to open doors to higher education for all, regardless of background. We are ambitious for our students and staff, aiming to match local needs with global standards and we work in partnership with enterprise, community and Government to deliver impact. Our strategy is to be a university without walls - connected to place but outward-looking and building bridges between learning, research and real-world applications.

Our vision to 2030 is to be a catalyst for sustainable change through education and research that transforms lives, our region and the wider world. To achieve this, our strategic priorities are clear, namely, to deliver high-quality and flexible education, to grow research and innovation capacity, particularly applied research that addresses real-world problems, to nurture our people and organisation in order that everyone can reach their potential and to connect with communities locally, nationally, and internationally.

TUS is only one part of a much larger story. The five technological universities together now enrol well over 100,000 students. Collectively, we operate across 30 campuses nationwide in the most geographically distributed higher education network in the country. That distribution matters; it means opportunity, talent and innovation are not confined to the major cities but are seeded across every region of the State and are delivered through modes including full time, part-time, apprenticeship and flexible, and across QQI levels 6 to 10.

Our sector also represents a significant national workforce in its own right. Across the five technological universities, we now employ almost 10,000 staff - academic, research, professional, and support - delivering education, research, and services in direct partnership with our regions. At TUS alone, we employ over 1,500 staff. This scale underlines both the opportunity and the scale inherent in our sector.

The overall socioeconomic impact is substantial. Individually each TU is a major regional economic engine; collectively the sector’s contribution runs into the billions of euro annually. Beyond the operational spend and student expenditure, the long-term return to the Exchequer from graduates, the innovation capacity generated by research and the high employment rates of our graduates in key industrial areas all make the sector a cornerstone of Ireland’s sustainable economic growth.

However, there are also serious challenges that limit our capacity to deliver fully on this mission. I will highlight two. The first is sustainable funding. The ambition placed on TUs in respect of regional development, access, research and skills for a dynamic economy must be matched with a sustainable funding model. The second is purpose-built student accommodation, PBSA. In regional centres such as Limerick and Athlone, demand for accommodation far outstrips supply. Without targeted investment in PBSA, access to higher education will remain constrained, especially for students from under-represented backgrounds for whom the absence of affordable and secure housing can be a decisive barrier. Further, the experience of university of many students will be compromised with long-term negative effects. TUS is committed to playing our part in delivering and developing solutions but the challenge requires a coherent national strategy and funding response.

To be clear, I believe that there are opportunities to provide solutions both on-campus and campus-adjacent, but we need to be enabled to develop and to operate PBSA to turn these opportunities into realities. I would welcome the opportunity to discuss further the mechanisms that could allow us to do this, something that we all have a shared interest in doing. Despite these challenges, the opportunities before us are considerable. Technological universities can expand Ireland’s research and innovation capacity, support lifelong learning, and anchor balanced regional development in line with Project Ireland 2040. We are central to Ireland’s competitiveness in a knowledge economy, but also to its cohesion as a society. To this end, the technological universities are forming a new representative and advocacy body for our sector, the Technological Universities Association or TUA, which we are happy to discuss with you.