Erin McGreehan (Louth, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Apologies have been received from Deputy Boyd Barrett. I welcome everyone to this morning's meeting. I ask anyone attending remotely to mute themselves when not contributing so we do not pick up any background noise or feedback. As usual, I remind all of those in attendance to ensure their mobile phones are on silent mode or switched off.

Members attending remotely are reminded of the constitutional requirement that in order to participate in public meetings, members must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex. As the witnesses are on the precincts of Leinster House, they are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the presentation they make to the committee. This means they have an absolute defence against any defamation action for anything they say at the meeting. However, they are expected not to abuse this privilege and it is my duty, as Cathaoirleach, to ensure it is not abused. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative they comply with any such direction.

Members are also reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person or entity outside the Houses or an official of the Houses, either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

On the agenda for today's meeting is a discussion on the content of university courses with the following witnesses. From the Irish Universities Association, IUA, we have Mr. Paul Johnston, director general. From University College Cork, UCC, we have Professor Stephen Byrne, deputy president and registrar. From Dublin City University, DCU, we are joined by Professor Blánaid White, executive dean, faculty of science and health. From Trinity College Dublin, TCD, we have Professor Vincent Wade, dean of undergraduate studies and senior lecturer. The witnesses are all very welcome to the meeting.

I call Mr. Paul Johnston to give his opening statement. He has five minutes.

Mr. Paul Johnston:

I thank the members of the committee for the opportunity to have this dialogue this morning. We welcome this opportunity to discuss how IUA universities ensure that university courses are relevant, up to date, responsive to the needs of learners, employers and society, and equip Ireland's workforce with the 21st century skills required to succeed. Our seven universities each maintain a comprehensive, externally validated system for the design, approval, delivery, review and enhancement of their academic programmes. These systems align with European standards and are subject to oversight by Quality and Qualifications Ireland, QQI.

New programmes go through both internal validation to ensure strategic alignment, evidence of demand, viability, learning outcomes and resource requirements, as well as an external expert review assessing academic coherence, alignment with the national framework of qualifications, NFQ, assessment strategies and the appropriateness of the proposed curriculum. The universities' portfolios respond to societal needs, support student success and uphold high academic standards. They are overseen by rigorous internal governance structures under the authority of each university's academic council.

The student experience and student outcomes are central to programme enhancement and institutional decision-making. The universities embed student partnership across their quality assurance systems through a range of methods, including student representation on programme boards, academic council and quality review committees; systematic analysis of student and graduate feedback, including StudentSurvey.ie and the graduate outcomes survey; and annual monitoring of progression, retention and other student success metrics.

Each university ensures that course content remains current, relevant and responsive to national and global developments through a range of measures, including monitoring of disciplinary developments, labour market trends and national skills priorities; structured engagement with employers, other industry partners and professional bodies, ensuring programmes reflect contemporary practice and emerging needs; integration of research-informed teaching, ensuring that students benefit from the latest scholarship and innovation; regular updating of modules and assessments, informed by student feedback, external examiner feedback and professional accreditation requirements.

With the arrival of GenAI, the universities have put in place internal supports to help their staff understand how AI works, to illustrate how GenAI can be used in teaching, learning, assessment and research, including how it is already being used within Irish universities, as well as to identify risks and challenges. AI technologies offer potential benefits for teaching and learning but AI also presents risks if implemented without due consideration to areas such as academic integrity, privacy and equity of access. Universities are seeking to ensure that students can use AI to enhance their learning and develop cutting edge skills, while ensuring ethics, equity and academic integrity are safeguarded.

In terms of engagement with employers and other external stakeholders, workplace readiness, future skills and experiential learning are core aspects of university programmes. Most students have access to placement or study abroad opportunities through their programmes. For example, at UCC approximately 4,000 students benefit from placements or work-integrated learning opportunities every year. The interaction between the university and local and national employers is multifaceted. There are multiple touch points, such as formal stakeholder meetings; industry advisory boards; workshops, placements and internships; employer-supervised or engaged project work; alumni networks; guest lectures and careers fairs. External stakeholders contribute to programme design, review, accreditation and work-integrated learning. This ensures Irish university graduates are equipped with the knowledge, skills and attributes required in a rapidly evolving society.

On transversal skills, universities are working to ensure students develop the necessary skills to thrive in a rapidly changing world. Such skills, often known as "transversal" are uniquely human and are central to the educational experience of Irish university students in the 21st century.

They include skills such as critical thinking, ethical decision-making, communication, teamwork, entrepreneurship, leadership and digital literacy project management. I know from my experience in my new job of talking to business leaders that these skills are highly valued by employers, both Irish and multinational, who are all seeking to future-proof their businesses by hiring and growing the number of people able to successfully navigate change and complexity. The universities thus seek to embed, assess and evidence these skills across our programmes so that students are formally assessed on them. For example, the DCU Futures programme, with its transversal skills competence framework and MySkills platform, allows students to log on and generate a personalised skills report based on the formal assessment of their transversal skills in their programme of study.

Flexible upskilling and reskilling are increasingly important parts of our offer. Micro-credentials are small, accredited courses designed to meet the demands of learners, enterprise and organisations. A suite of 600 courses has been created by universities in close consultation with enterprise, offering a flexible, bite-sized and accessible ways of upskilling and reskilling, all accessible through a user-friendly portal, microcreds.ie. These are research-led and quality assured, and learners may choose to undertake an individual micro-credential course or continue to study, advancing their skills and knowledge over time. Over the past three years 20,000 learners employed in SMEs and large multinationals around the country and in the public service have signed up for micro-credential courses.

DCU Futures and micro-credential courses are examples of the universities' work to enhance teaching, learning and student success across the sector, with support from the human capital initiative, HCI. This shows what can be achieved when right-sized funding supports the sector. Thus, the continued underfunding of higher education limits opportunities for maximising the potential to innovate in a systemic way. The Higher Education Authority, HEA, review of the university funding model and the annual budget cycles are opportunities to ensure that Irish higher education is adequately funded to ensure the future skills needs of the country. We repeat our welcome for the progress made in addressing the core funding gap and we stress the importance of closing the gap as quickly as possible to build a secure bridge to the future.

Fionntán Ó Súilleabháin (Wicklow-Wexford, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Johnston. I will make a couple of points on his opening statement. AI poses a huge challenge. It has certain benefits but poses a huge challenge with regard to critical thinking. Mr. Johnston mentioned how important it is to develop critical thinking skills. Is AI conflicting with this? Are there other issues to do with the governance of universities inhibiting critical thinking skills? I remember listening last year to Professor Orla Feely, president of UCD, who spoke about this. Back when I was in college in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was a lot of debate and critical thinking. Professor Feely made the point that there is a certain uniformity of thinking and that universities today are not really encouraging a diversity of opinion and critical thinking skills. There is too much uniformity. I know some other people have also said this in various institutions. How widespread is this in universities? Is AI contributing to it and working against critical thinking skills?

Mr. Paul Johnston:

I will ask Professor Wade to speak about this in a moment. From my experience, in only three or four months in the job, going around speaking to employers and a range of people we get the sense that AI will be massively transformative, and that AI and the wider digital revolution will change how we work and live and, therefore, it will change how we teach and what we teach. One of the things that does come out of it, and I was at the Minister's skills round table yesterday, is the importance that people place on human capacity and skills. They will continue to do so, and in some ways it will be even more important in the world of AI, not only from a workforce point of view but from a society and democratic resilience point of view, that young people - and not so young people - have the human capacity and skills to navigate a world of complexity, misinformation, disinformation and populism. At a democratic resilience level, in a world of AI it is important to have critical thinking and original thinking skills. In the workplace AI may suppress and compress a lot of jobs but it will mean the people there will need to learn how to manage AI and learn from it, and learn to apply original and critical thinking skills. Professor Wade has run Trinity's AI programme and can give a proper response to this important question.

Professor Vincent Wade:

I thank Deputy Ó Súilleabháin for the question. AI is being used by students in all universities. We reckon about 90% of the student body uses it. Our research has shown it is not about the AI necessarily but how we use it, how it is used in teaching and how it is used to transform the assessment. In terms of our approach to it, the first issue is to try to have our academics and students understand the technology itself. AI literacy becomes a very important aspect of this. It is not a question of just consuming or accepting that which AI says is correct. We know it can have hallucinations. We know it can be quite homogenous, which is the point Professor Feely was making. In terms of how it is used in academic programmes, what we are saying is that sometimes in enterprise we get an idea that AI is being used to find out what the answer is. In education, however, that is not what we want. We want AI to scaffold the learner so the learner critically thinks and builds up skills and confidence. The way in which learners experience the use of AI, and how to master it rather than be subservient to it, is very much how we lay it out. If they want to use it for brainstorming, they can double-check and fact-check what is going on. With regard to using it as a critical friend or in different ways, we explain to academics the way it should be used and how it can support them.

A very good survey was done of students in the UK in terms of what they want in understanding AI. They want to be able to use the skills because they see it as part of employment and development. They also want to understand how they can control it and how they can understand how best to use it as an agency rather than being consumed by it. This is what is being rolled out in the universities. There was a national forum involving Trinity, University of Limerick and DCU, and we developed an entire course for academics on how to master it. That is being rolled out to all of the universities and it is freely available to academics. They can build up the skills and understand how best to use it.

Deputy Ó Súilleabháin asked whether there is a danger that if students do not have this learning skill, they will end up going to AI for the answer and cutting and pasting it. The way we have suggested it can be used is very much around having the students use it as one source of information, which they have to check, but the work has to be their own. In terms of assessments, and how AI is deployed and students submit their work, they will be allowed to use AI but they have to be critical in how they use it and for what they use it. It becomes a tool they can use as distinct from something that is being consumed.

The Deputy also asked about homogenisation of opinion. One of the things we do in education is to get AI to generate and have the students critique the result. They can see very quickly where it comes out with very similar or convergent information, and this is then compared to the creativity of the students themselves. Usually it gives students more confidence. They see that they are in control of it and it is not in control of them and they go forward in that way.

Fionntán Ó Súilleabháin (Wicklow-Wexford, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Looking back over the years, Professor Wade has seen a lot of changes. Is there more uniformity of thought now in universities than there was 20 or 30 years ago? Leaving aside AI, have universities become more uniform in their thinking? This is what Professor Feely suggested.

Professor Vincent Wade:

All universities encourage critical thinking and unique thinking. I do not believe there is a homogenisation of thought throughout the universities. Most of the universities would encourage independent thought. One of the graduate attributes of Trinity is creative thinking and being able to stand up and have an opinion.

I can vouch for Trinity. We have four graduate attributes, and they certainly embody that approach, where you should be able to stand up and have an opinion, be able to argue it and have that creativity. I cannot talk for all universities, but I am sure they would say the same. We would have put that in place 15 years ago now in terms of a graduate attribute. In every course that Trinity offers, when we put the programme objectives together, they have to reflect where in this programme these four attributes will be supported. How is it supporting critical thinking, responsibility and communication skills? All of those will be built into the programmes from the ground up. I would say "No", but-----

Fionntán Ó Súilleabháin (Wicklow-Wexford, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

In terms of UCD, where is that coming from?

Professor Vincent Wade:

I do not know if it was Professor Feely's intention to give the impression that it was homogenous in UCD.

Fionntán Ó Súilleabháin (Wicklow-Wexford, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

She was talking about the general overall trend in universities that students do not feel as challenged now or they do not feel that they can be challenged. She is saying it is essential that they are challenged in many ways.

Erin McGreehan (Louth, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

UCD is not here to speak for itself so we can move on.

Professor Blánaid White:

We had the HCI funding from 2020. It was competitive funding. That was for all institutions. There was the Creative Futures in UCD, the Designing Futures in UL and UL at Work. Cork had one as well, as did Trinity. One of the core drivers around that was around developing human capabilities and examining whether there were instances of things like homogenisation of thought, and evaluating that, and ensuring, by design, that this was not happening. It was about developing spaces and pathways, and designing and incorporating.

In DCU engineering, for example, we assess on engineering, but we also have spaces where we explicitly and deliberately develop and then assess students' abilities to think critically and develop that. We are developing those skill spaces as well as the discipline spaces. All our institutions use things like HCI to specifically ensure that things like critical thinking, ethical decision-making, communications leadership and all those skills were designed to ensure, given all the changes that are happening in the world with things like generative AI, that our programmes were not succumbing to any sort of dumbing down of thought or homogenisation. Things like HCI were critical for us in terms of ensuring that is not the case.

Fionntán Ó Súilleabháin (Wicklow-Wexford, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

That is good to hear, because I think that was the origin of universities going back thousands of years. They were meant to be arenas of thought.

John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their opening statement and welcome them. I welcome the inclusion of what they term as transversal skills into course content. How embedded in it are they? Are all institutions now running modules across all disciplines where critical thinking, leadership and communications feature? Irrespective of how academic somebody is, they will succeed in life through having those skills at a high level. How embedded is it?

Mr. Paul Johnston:

Everyone is welcome to come in on that. I will go back to the anecdotal experience of being at the skills roundtable at TU Dublin yesterday. Ten different sectors were represented, ranging from the construction trade and energy to agrifood and professional services. A consistent message was what they really value in their graduates, as well as good sectoral knowledge, is the ability to think outside the box, commercial acumen, leadership and critical thinking.

John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The public sector also would welcome all of those.

Mr. Paul Johnston:

I knew it myself from 35 years ago, albeit in a different public sector, that it is something that is crucial in a graduate. It is also crucial that the institution helps to grow that capacity. Someone once said everyone does a second degree once they are in a business or institution. They are doing a further set of continuous learning. My colleagues will be much more expert in expressing it, but it is something that is recognised and is integrated. Another thing that struck me when going to talk to UCC Futures and others is the focus on interdisciplinarity, given that so many of the problems we are facing now require systems-level thinking. It is not just engineering; it is commercial skills and digital skills and that ability to integrate them, which I think is closely allied to the transferable skills point. I will ask Professor Byrne and Professor White if they would like to comment.

Professor Stephen Byrne:

I thank the Deputy for the question. In terms of transversal skills, while we have digital skills modules and communications modules in specific disciplines, they are embedded through assessments and through learning outcomes. Students will be exposed to presentations critiquing debate across their programmes at multiple stages throughout their degrees. We can evidence that through our curriculum enhancement project and management system, where we can extract and export the levels of assessments and types of assessments that students are being exposed to that foster digital, transversal communication. The microcredentials have also been an opportunity for people in industry, as Mr. Johnston said in his opening statement. A total of 20,000 individuals in public and private sector industry employment have engaged with microcredentials. Those microcredentials could be around digital upskilling, communications or generative AI. They have enabled those individuals to upskill.

John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

From what I read, if I started a BA, BComm, BSc or bachelor's in medicine, that there will be content in that course that will be transferable across all of those disciplines.

Professor Stephen Byrne:

Absolutely. If the Deputy came into our BEng, which is a common entry programme, for the first year he would be on a common entry stream, and then he specialises at the end of that year. He will be exposed to a number of different activities that will be translatable across. He will also be then doing interdisciplinary learning activities with other disciplines, say from medicine or health science, trying to generate the solutions for the future. One example would be around active ageing, where health science students on the health professional programme are working with engineers to try to critically think and develop solutions for a healthier lifestyle in the future.

John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I will ask about the length of time to complete an undergraduate degree. I have a firm belief that young people are starting their third level academic career too soon at 17 or 18 and having to make a decision at that point. This kind of stuff will reduce the gravity of that decision being something that they are determining for the rest of their lives, but I would always be encouraging young people to spend as much time as they can in the third level institution, to do the degree and maybe a postgraduate degree. However, some parents have said to me - their motivation is purely cost - that they find that their child is enrolled in a four-year programme that could possibly be completed over three years. That is motivated by cost. They might have to send them to Dublin, Galway, Sligo or wherever and pay for accommodation and tuition fees. They feel that they may only be there for an hour on Thursday and an hour on Friday. They may not start on Monday until midday. I welcome that. I am delighted that my own child might experience that, but are we extending content across four years that could be completed in three purely for revenue purposes? Is it unfair to say that?

Professor Stephen Byrne:

I think it is unfair to say that. We have a number of degrees in University College Cork that are three-year degrees. Our BA in law can be completed in three years. Broad science degrees are four years. Medical professional degrees are five years. It is about the course content. Every student is required to take 60 ECTS credits in a year. That is how we measure the content within an undergraduate programme. If that content can be delivered over a three-year period, that is 180 credits. Similarly with a law degree, they will graduate after three years of that. It is down to the nature of the programme and the intensity of the laboratories. Perhaps a student who is coming in on a Monday for an hour has directed reading, group work and library study that they are supposed to be undertaking as well.

Professor Vincent Wade:

To add to that, a number of our degrees - quite a large number on the STEM side, business side and medical and health sciences side - are accredited. It is the accreditation bodies' requirements for these skills that they have to demonstrate in the labs, the medical professions and the business or whatever. In those ones in particular, we are trying to have the students' skills as sharp as possible, but it takes those four years to develop that. I do not want to make it worse, but for an engineer, the expectation is now becoming five years across Europe.

The acceptance across Europe now is that a trained engineer has a master’s if they want to compete in Europe. It is the same in computer science. Students can still exit with an honours bachelor’s degree after four years, but if they really want to progress further and be able to move across Europe and back again, sometimes those higher skills are required. It is something we take very seriously in making use of students' time within the degrees we have.

John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

On the HEA review of the funding model, we increasingly see corporate sponsorship of institutions and of specific courses, predominantly postgraduate. Is there any concern that this corporate sponsorship could influence the content of the course or the curricular area?

Professor Blánaid White:

There are two points to it. The first point is that from a funding perspective, it is often out of necessity that we are exploring opportunities. The systematic underfunding is such that we have to be a bit more creative in being able to fully recover costs. On the other side of the question, my strong sense would be “No”, in terms of concerns around compromise. This is because our quality assurance systems are so robust that even if we wanted to, we could not. There are our accreditations, annual reviews or periodic reviews, and the QQI CINNTE reports. All of those checks and balances are built in and there, even if we were coming under pressure from an institutional perspective to shape a course in a particular way. There is also the content of what we cover. One of our modules in the business school, in digital business, is called “Failure”. It is about exploring where different businesses have failed in different perspectives, what lessons can be taken from those failures and how to grow and develop things like critical thinking. Those types of modules, by design, challenge. Even in examples where an association or a company is involved in contributing towards an institution, there is this exposure and challenge, and that robustness is there. I would say that our systems are sufficiently robust that it is not an issue for us.

John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Mar cheist dheiridh, bhí roinnt daoine ar nós na finnéithe as na hinstitiúidí anseo cúpla seachtaine ó shin. We had a number of guests from different institutions before an Oireachtas committee agus an t-ábhar a bhí á phlé againn ná nach raibh dóthain cúrsaí nó deiseanna ar fáil do dhaoine a gcuid staidéir a dhéanamh trí mheán na Gaeilge sna hinstitiúidí tríú leibhéal. There is a lack of opportunity for people to study through Irish at third level institutions, unless they are studying Irish as a curricular subject or más maith leo a bheith ina mhúinteoir, they are going on to be a teacher. Can we do something to increase the number of multidisciplinary courses and varied disciplinary courses available through the Irish language? I see it as an issue of equality. Tá daoine sa tír seo agus is í an Ghaeilge a dteanga dúchais. Irish is their native language, and they are not being afforded the opportunity to study through Irish at third level institutions.

Professor Stephen Byrne:

There are opportunities to further enhance this area. We have a number of programmes that have Irish. The Deputy is correct that they tend to be associated with education and in primary and secondary education programmes. We also, however, do community outreach work and significant community work for the locality. My Ionad na Gaeilge Labhartha runs a programme, Irish for the Terrified, which is about promoting the Irish language and working with secondary schools in disadvantaged areas. We are promoting an Ghaeilge and promoting the use of the Irish language. We are also going out to promote it with their parents, and running Irish for the Terrified classes for the parents to support the secondary schools. We started in a group of DEIS schools in the Cork city area to promote the use of the Irish language. Hopefully, we will then see that progress through. With the correct funding and upskilling, there are opportunities to further enhance the provision.

John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I welcome that type of initiative. Chuirfinn fáilte mhór roimh aon rud mar sin ach dá mba rud é gur dalta a bhí ionaim féin, if I was a student agus bhí mé ag iarraidh Gaeilge a dhéanamh, abair go raibh mé ar mheánscoil trí Ghaeilge agus go raibh mé ag iarraidh a bheith i mo dhochtúir nó innealtóir, if I want to be a doctor or an engineer, I cannot continue that education through Irish. It seems discriminatory. When we debate this, the institutions tell us they would need to get more funding from the HEA, or whoever it is, and then the HEA tells us the institutions have a degree of independence.

Professor Stephen Byrne:

There are options to continue to study and use the Irish language through electives within a programme of study. If students are studying medicine, they can choose electives. There are electives within our medical degree that students can select. We have students who might, rightly or wrongly, select statistics, Spanish or German, but Irish is there as an option too as an elective subject. It is down to the individual student to choose those electives. As Professor Wade said earlier, the external professional bodies in those programmes require a rigorous curriculum to be set out, and a small number of electives are provided to students.

Pauline Tully (Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for the opening statement. In the context of ensuring the relevance and currency of course content, it was mentioned that labour market trends, national skills priorities and so on are monitored. I presume that includes engaging with representatives of the public sector where we see shortages in different disciplines. I am thinking in particular of health and of teaching. For a number of years, there has been a shortage of teachers in certain subject areas. That has been continuing for a number of years. It is the same in therapies, particularly for children, including occupational therapy, physiotherapy, psychology and speech and language therapy. Are increased numbers of courses, and positions on courses, being offered to try to address such shortages?

Professor Blánaid White:

In terms of the therapies, in particular - I will start from DCU's position but I know it is the same for all the institutions - we are waiting on a call for an expression of interest, EOI, to come out for us because we have a willingness and a wish to expand in those areas. One of our biggest constraints is the number of placements available to us. The limiting factors are not the institutions. Only last week in DCU, we accredited a professional doctorate in educational psychology in respect of providing more educational psychologists for schools and for the National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS, for example. We are, therefore, ready to go. We have accredited that course in anticipation of an EOI we were advised would come out in the first quarter of this year.

We are negotiating, as all the institutions are, with the national placements office. Our biggest constraint, actually, in terms of expanding courses in the allied health professions, is that the placements throughout the programmes are a mandatory part of the training for those students. The issue is getting access to that number of placements. This is our first year of a master's in physiotherapy in DCU. We have 20 students on the course this year, and we have a willingness and capacity to expand it, but again our limiting factor has been the number of placements for students training in that space. We absolutely stand willing and prepared and are enthusiastic about wanting to expand the number of places and offerings across our institutions.

Professor Stephen Byrne:

I will expand on that point. Since 2023, the HEA has run a number of EOIs to expand a whole suite of programmes. UCC has participated in that process. We were unsuccessful in some of those applications to expand programmes. The HEA, as a policy decision, decided to move to new schools and new start-ups, but that was the process. As Professor White said, the critical provision here is the healthcare placement provision for students on placement. This includes the supervision, the tutor-student ratios, and ensuring those healthcare opportunities exist. The regulators dictate the number of hours, the number of placements and the type of placement, whether it can be in an acute setting or in primary care, for example, so the students will achieve those graduate attributes and be able to register with a professional body upon graduation.

In UCC, we doubled our number of physiotherapy students last year because we are now able to expand into a primary care setting in the provision of physiotherapy students. We have also expanded in radiology. We would be open to expanding in other healthcare disciplines, like pharmacy, dentistry and nursing. On the educational front, we have a number of professional master of education, PME, programmes. These also experience some limitations. One recent example from our institution is the provision of home economics as a subject choice. We do not have sufficient secondary school places providing that subject so that it is possible to have a teacher and a student in situ to offer the oversight and mentorship role along with the provision of classes.

Sometimes in some of the more discrete subject areas, it is building capacity slowly and we will again be able to accelerate it with more qualified teachers in that area. We will then be able to accelerate the education down the line.

Pauline Tully (Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I have heard that the clinical supervision is not there, especially for some of the disciplines. It is almost a chicken-and-egg situation. We need these people within our system and our children, in particular, are suffering, as well as some adults, as a result. Do we have similar systems to the North, England, Scotland or Wales? Could we work in tandem with those countries to have clinical supervision placements in, for example, England as part of the course? Would something like that work?

Professor Stephen Byrne:

I can give the Senator an example from my own profession. I am a pharmacist by professional background. Until 2014, all training had to be done on the island of Ireland. That was set by the regulator in national legislation. It changed in 2014 and now some placements are eligible to be undertaken throughout Europe. We actively encourage students to go to Europe for their fourth-year placement but they are still required, under the legislation, to complete their final-year placement in the Republic of Ireland. We are still restricted by national legislation. That goes across all the professions. There are limitations in the legislation as to where the placements can be completed. As Mr. Johnston said, we have 4,000 students in UCC on a work-integrated placement in any given year. Every year, I have several thousand students who go on an Erasmus placement. I am actively encouraging students to go abroad, experience the culture and learn from the European or global economy, bring that back to us, enhance their training and share it with others.

Pauline Tully (Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The witnesses talked about AI and the positives and so on. Is there a mechanism for checking that students' assignments have not been AI-generated?

Professor Vincent Wade:

There is no one mechanism. It is sometimes called the Swiss cheese approach, whereby there is a series of tests. It also depends on the design of the assessment itself. For example, we would say that if a student is producing work, one of the ways to assess it is to get the student to produce work at intervals. That way, you can see the progression. If there is a very quick progression, you can look at the editing of the document and begin to see straight away that there is something strange. You can use tools. The detection tools are not 100% accurate, but they are part of a triangulation. The next approach is where you have conversations with the studen and ask how they got an answer. You can begin to work with the student to figure out how much of the work is understood. There is no one mechanism. As academics, we have developed a set of approaches.

You can also design the assessments to be less AI-friendly by using very specific contexts. The AI will give more general solutions and using it will not be as productive.

Another part is educating the students. Rather than constantly trying to-----

Pauline Tully (Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Catch them out.

Professor Vincent Wade:

Yes. We are trying to show students that AI can be used in really good ways but the work needs to be their own because then they will have that basis.

The last part is that in assessments, there is often a combination of invigilated and non-invigilated assessment. When it is invigilated, students do not have access to the AI tools. If they have constantly been using AI tools to develop their solutions, they are going to have difficulty. We explain that to them and work with them on that. Often it is a combination of how we design and use the assessment and how we help students to understand how this tool can be used as an agent for them but not as a cut-and-paste source.

Laura Harmon (Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their statement, for attending for this important discussion, for all the work they do and for the forward planning. My first question will be for Professor Byrne. It was great to hear in the statement that there are 4,000 UCC students on placement. A UCC student from the government and politics society started a 12-week placement with me yesterday, which is brilliant. Is Professor Byrne seeing any particular trends over recent years in the placements that students are required to take up? Are there emerging or changing trends in any areas?

Professor Stephen Byrne:

I thank the Senator. One anecdotal trend, although I would have to see the data, is that the majority of bachelor of commerce students are now looking for placements within Europe rather than the US. From a cost-of-living point of view, students are looking to see if Erasmus funding is available to them. It eases the cost of the placement and the travel. We also see students seeking out opportunities in the big five multinationals because of the potential for employment opportunities. We would see trends in that way going towards the multinationals and in a European, rather than a US, context.

Laura Harmon (Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

My next question relates to competitiveness, which is obviously a good thing. Since the establishment of the technological universities, are the witnesses seeing more competition between the traditional universities, for want of a better phrase, and the technological universities? The whole ethos of technological universities is about learning by doing. In terms of placements, is there competition there? Is collaboration happening?

Professor Stephen Byrne:

The Senator may or may not know that we have six joint degrees with the Munster Technological University, MTU, which is our nearest technological university. We have a 25-year history of working collaboratively with the Cork Institute of Technology, which is now MTU. We have a long-standing history of collaborative placement opportunities. Our students tend to go out on placements at different times with local industry. Both institutions have representatives on the regional skills forum, which meets industry, so those discussions can be had. We work well collaboratively. Our joint programmes have one placement office to oversee the students going on placement, rather than competing for placements.

Laura Harmon (Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

It was great to hear in the opening statement the emphasis on collaboration with students and student feedback. There was also a mention of student unions, which are important. I come from such a background. I know a lot of universities provide recognition of extracurricular activities. Are there particular initiatives in that regard? Is there recognition or are there awards that would help students in their future careers?

Leading on from that, it is wonderful to see the impact that universities have on society as a whole and their local communities. Are there new modules in AI and AI literacy in the adult education and lifelong learning sectors?

Professor Blánaid White:

I can take the first half of the Senator's question and will pass to Professor Byrne for the second half. In the DCU context, two things spring to mind. First, we have what is called our Uaneen Award, which is a five-credit award similar to the Duke of Edinburgh Award in the UK. It is about explicitly acknowledging and giving credit - it is a five-credit module - to students' extracurricular activities. It is very broad. The students shape it. There is submission for assessment. The Uaneen Award for extracurricular activities formally sits on our curriculum.

We also have transversal skills development. We have the MySkills platform, where we assess the development of transversal skills through opportunities embedded formally in the curriculum. The students also self-report in the extracurricular space so that the overall MySkills report that the students generate is holistic from their perspective. It pulls from the extracurricular space and the within-curriculum space and shows the development of skills across the entirety of students' lived experience. There are, I am sure, similar examples across all the organisations. There is Compass in UCC.

Professor Stephen Byrne:

We have Compass and the EmployAgility Awards in UCC. Those awards, which are being presented at lunchtime today, are for volunteerism and for the hours that students volunteer. They document that volunteerism and can get recognition for it. This year, the students contributed approximately 35,000 hours. Through their participation, they are adding to the community.

Professor Blánaid White:

It is really important for us across all of the universities that we see our students as agentic and powered individuals. We recognise that through a variety of means.

Professor Vincent Wade:

It is similar for Trinity but I will just focus on the AI question. There are courses being developed and offered in AI literacy but we also work collaboratively. For example, I sit with SOLAS on its AI micro-qualifications forum to help strategically with what the micro-qualifications are, where they would go and so forth. That was launched only a couple of months ago in Microsoft with the Minister for further and higher education. There is a whole set of offerings coming out in further education in the area of AI literacy. Our suggestion is that it should grow, so it is about understanding it and what it means.

What happens with AI, particularly, is that people are using the vocabulary without really understanding what it means. Words like "hallucination" come into play and people do not understand why or how that is. It is based on probability. There is no fact and there is no knowledge base, as such, within generative AI systems. That continues through to how to use AI better, what the prompts are or the ways in which you can control the AI as distinct from the AI controlling you and feeding you what it wants.

The third part is very much around regulation, ethics and sustainability. What are the proper, appropriate and responsible ways of using AI? That kind of progression of courses is available. It is really interesting that they are now becoming more focused on particular roles. We are now seeing them offered not just for general roles but for somebody in the professions, such as accountancy, so that they get the flavour and case studies that are much more suited to them. That is what we have been supporting both as individual universities and across the sector in giving advice so there is a whole set of different options. That is the only way to do it because you need to rightsize it.

Laura Harmon (Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

On the underfunding of the sector, do the professors see that impacting on their work in terms of student placements and the development of courses? Following on from that, do they see any impact of the housing situation in Ireland on students' ability to take up places within the country? Is that something they have noticed?

Professor Blánaid White:

HCI allowed us to have the capacity to do that broad, sweeping, cross-university curriculum enhancement. The review gave us space to have sufficient capacity to have people teaching but also people reviewing and developing new content. The structural underfunding squeezes our capacity to do that. That is where it is seen in a very real way. If we consider our computing programmes as an example, about one third of our content is reviewed and updated annually to make sure the students are best placed to hit the ground running when they graduate. That requires people to teach, review and develop. When there is that structural underfunding, it squeezes your ability to do that. We continue to find spaces to try to do it but the underfunding squeezes our ability to plan it and develop it to be structured and systematic in how we do it.

In terms of things like taking up places, if a student has found a place and then gets a placement, very often they want their work placement to be sufficiently close to where they are living so they do not have to give up their current accommodation because if they leave it for six months or a year, it is difficult to get it back. We see students trying to co-ordinate all of their activities outside of the institution because our programmes are porous. We have lots of opportunities where students interact with industry and in some cases go on multiple different placements throughout their degree. Every time, they need their accommodation base to be static.

It is not always the case but I have had experiences of students saying they want to take their placement here as opposed to going to the west because they cannot afford to pay for their accommodation here to keep it. We see it in spaces like that and we try very hard to work with the students because we have strict rules around students having to take placements. We are trying to work within those guidelines to support students where they need to keep their accommodation so that it is somewhere commutable for them.

Professor Stephen Byrne:

On the underfunding, the OECD student-staff ratios in Ireland are higher than those of our European counterparts. That is directly linked to underfunding, which results in students having less time with staff and the ratio being at odds.

Donna McGettigan (Clare, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for coming in today. On the pros and cons of AI, a course or piece of content can be condensed but the problem is you will not get the full understanding of it. Deputy Connolly brought up a very interesting point about the length of the course where sometimes you are only in for an hour and you then add library time. Could library time not be at home? Why do you have to be in the library for that time? I do not get how that adds to the length of the course, considering everything is online.

I understand that AI is used and, as I said, when you condense a course, you are not getting the full understanding of it. When the institutions are identifying whether someone is using AI for plagiarism, who oversees that? Could they be using AI tools to find plagiarism? Where does the whole AI thing stop?

Professor Stephen Byrne:

In UCC, we have appointed an academic integrity officer. We have updated our AI plagiarism policy and included that in our academic integrity plagiarism policy, specifically around AI. Only last week, we held a forum for academics across the institution to come together and share with each other the experiences of where they have identified the use of AI by students. At all stages, we encourage the individuals to engage with the students and talk to the students to see if AI was used.

We have an updated policy now and we have a register of students who have been found to have used AI to breach the policy. We then send the students on an educational upskilling and training programme. We do the same with various other activities across the university. It is for the student to become a learner and to see it as a learning opportunity. We can then monitor the student, while they are going through the programme, to see if they are breaching the academic integrity policy for AI use and we can escalate the penalties further.

Professor Vincent Wade:

In Trinity, it is the same. The use, or misuse, of AI is part of academic integrity. The way we handle that in the system is very similar to what Professor Byrne said. In Trinity, we have a whole series of steps and depending on the misuse or incorrect use, there are different levels of penalty and also retraining. I was not quite sure about the beginning of the Deputy's question when she was talking about condensing a course using AI. I am not sure I followed that.

Donna McGettigan (Clare, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Many documents could be condensed so you are just getting-----

Professor Vincent Wade:

They can be summarised.

Donna McGettigan (Clare, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

-----a summary but that means you are not getting a full understanding of the course. Could that be happening?

Professor Vincent Wade:

It depends on the way in which a course is delivered. I will take my course as an example. I am a professor in AI but I taught computer science for 30 years. We use AI in the learning of software engineering but there have been times when we would not let students have access to it because we want them to have the basic skill. When they have the basic skill, we allow them to use AI to go further. In that situation, AI can help students identify certain documents they really need. It can help them identify certain things and it can explain points to them but the skill they have to develop is a practice-based skill. It is a problem solving-based skill so they have to practise those skills.

When people talk about efficiencies that AI gives, it may make it easier to get access to relevant material but it does not necessarily fast-forward the actual learning and the ability to solve those problems, which is achieved through practice. One engineering student of ours was at an open forum and he stood up to say it was the struggle that had helped him get the confidence to be able to solve the problems.

We are suggesting that AI can help with the struggle but it should not remove that because it is part of the learning process. Having the supports in place may help the student to reach that threshold point more rapidly but they need to be able to demonstrate those skills. In that sense it can make some of the learning faster and easier, but it does not necessarily remove and condense the whole course in that situation.

Donna McGettigan (Clare, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

We know that Ireland has the highest level of fees for graduate entry medicine. People from a lower socioeconomic background may not be able to get in or when they do get in, they may find it difficult to stay in the courses. I understand that the universities have hardship funds and help out where they can. How can proper resources be put in place so that everybody can have access to this and not just those who can afford the courses?

Professor Stephen Byrne:

A student who applies for graduate entry medicine also has the opportunity to apply as a mature student through direct entry medicine. Therefore, there are opportunities available to that student. We would be open to discussions with the Government and policy decision-makers on the funding. The recognition by SUSI of places on graduate entry medicine programmes would enable those students to seek grant support from SUSI. At the moment it is not recognised under the SUSI funding scheme, but there may be an opportunity to further develop and explore opportunities there.

Donna McGettigan (Clare, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

How much North-South collaboration do universities have?

Mr. Paul Johnston:

I will have to take that from a combination of the old job and the current job. There is a forum called Universities Ireland, which includes universities, North and South. The Deputy may have seen that Queen's University Belfast has announced a tie-up with Dundalk Institute of Technology. From being at last year's inaugural British-Irish summit and then this year's summit in Cork recently, I know that one of the areas the two Governments and the Northern Ireland Executive are keen to explore is how we develop the relationship North-South and also east-west, given that we have a common travel area and that we have a lot in common.

There will be practical issues to do with portability and mobility and they were raised yesterday at the skills roundtable. There is also a recognition that for a mixture of societal, educational and wider political and business reasons, it is an agenda on which we need to do more. While I do not have the figures in my head, many fewer students from Northern Ireland are coming to the Republic and vice versa than would have been the case in more difficult times 30 years ago. There are a range of factors behind that. We are very much up for looking at ways to address that.

Professor Vincent Wade:

I might add to that because I am on the Universities Ireland council. One of the challenges is how to recognise the equivalent of the leaving cert in the UK and so forth. That has been addressed to a great extent. One of the other problems is to do with the timing of when we have the results. The timing of the leaving cert results and CAO offers in the South is after the results in the North. The students in the North have to make their choice and it is really frustrating. When that expansion of the leaving cert reduces, we hope that the results will come out when they used to come out in which case this alignment will be much closer. That is something we really want.

Maeve O'Connell (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank all the witnesses for coming in today and for their detailed opening statements. As I am sure they are probably aware, I am a former lecturer so I also speak from personal experience. I wish to come back to a few points that were made earlier. The first one relates to the class sizes. A large class size is regarded as anything above 50. Despite my efforts, I have never found any academic research that shows that at third level there is any significant difference in reducing sizes. I have been through the Covid experience where particularly for my larger classes teaching them online worked much better because the interaction was much easier. It is much more conducive to that level of interaction rather than in the classroom.

The other factor with large class sizes is attendance because it is much more difficult for them to get that level of engagement and attendance tends to drop quite significantly. I notice that in their monitoring of success rates, the witnesses do not include attendance as part of that. I was recently at the opening of UCD's O'Connor Centre for Learning which is brilliant. One of its measures for seeing that it works is that by changing from teaching in a traditional classroom to these new-style classrooms, attendance increased.

Why are we not doing more blended learning? Why are we not having more online classes when it suits the subject, suits the way of teaching and suits the students? That would certainly enable us to potentially compress the weeks and not have some of the commuting issues. It may potentially improve outcomes overall. Based on my personal experience, I had greater attendance with one particular module when it was online during the Covid pandemic than I would have had in the real world because it just worked better for students given the nature of the material. I agree it will not work for everything. We had this wonderful experiment for a couple of years and we learned a lot from it. It worked really well for some subjects and was a disaster for others; I totally get that. I would love to see us take those learnings and redesign our programmes and courses to suit the students where we know it did suit the students.

Professor Blánaid White:

It is a fascinating area for us to explore. We have a huge number of learnings from things like the great Covid experiment, for example. The Deputy is absolutely right; it works better for some disciplines than for others. I believe I would be representative of all our institutions when I say that we are having that dialogue, and exploring what has worked and what has not worked. For example, one sixth of our new futures programmes are online so we can optimise the blended space. We have a Springboard programme with the Drogheda Institute of Further Education, with 25% actually delivered in Drogheda and the other 75% online because it works for that.

We have a research space, the AGLC, which explicitly explores how best to teach and have students be active learners in large classroom spaces. One of our big learnings around that has been where there are opportunities in those large classes - typically we are talking about upwards of 300 in these classes - through having multiple educators in those spaces and helping students to actively learn in those spaces, we have been able to demonstrate increased deeper learning for those students in those spaces. There is a blend of everything there that we are looking at actively. The in-person active learning large classrooms with multiple education facilitators is one of the key ways that we see learning being very effective. We are always having that conversation around the optimal blend and what makes sense to put online. That absolutely works for a large seminar which has less interaction and we do deliver those online.

A big part of our students' learning is their learning from each other. On the in-person piece, we have seen in our assessments of our student learning, particularly at the undergraduate level, that the ability to learn - even learning to become self-directed learners - situates well in that space where there is the ability even within the large classes to have staff-student ratios that support those students' learnings. Is that reasonable?

Professor Stephen Byrne:

Yes. I would concur completely with what Professor White has said. For undergraduates in particular, the student feedback and the feedback from the student union is that the students want a third level on-campus experience. We do a lot of hybrid learning across various programmes but we see more of the hybrid learning at the postgraduate level. One example is our RePIC, a collaboration across ten European universities through our European alliance. We have students in all ten institutions diving in and receiving material and course content from other institutions in Spain, Germany and France.

They may then choose electives to go to visit those institutions or they can choose to remain here. We see the hybrid and blended approach being more effective and successful at the postgraduate level rather than the undergraduate level. Our student union representatives tell us that the 18- and 19-year-olds prefer an on-campus experience so that they can learn with, from and about each other.

Maeve O'Connell (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I certainly accept that for the first and second year, but even before we get to the postgraduate phase, by the last two years of college they have very much developed those self-directed learning skills. They have very much made their contacts and their connections. It is at that level that we could lean more into the blended space and provide more online teaching and structured support because at that stage they are quite ready for it, in my experience. If everybody has done their job well, by the time they get to third year they will have developed a lot of those self-directed skills and it is about continuing to support them rather than forcing them into a classroom which they know they are not going to get the value from unless, as Professor Byrne says, we put in a whole bunch of extra educators, which I am not sure is necessary for every module at that stage in a learner's journey.

Professor Blánaid White:

That is an ongoing dialogue we are having around where it is appropriate. For a lot of our programmes where it is appropriate in third and fourth year, it is incorporated, and we have that blended piece. One of the things we do in third and fourth year, in particular, is around challenge-based learning. The Deputy is right when she says that in first and second year you build those foundations, and then in years three and four you start to look across disciplines and you start to build those interdisciplinary spaces together and build those multidisciplinary teams that are critical as a learning and development space for students because that is what they are going to experience in industry. You are having students from engineering, business and politics all coming into one space to work on challenge-based problems which are industry-informed. In those instances, it is again about what is optimal and then making the decision about whether the learning is in person, online, synchronous or asynchronous, and what best supports the student learning outcomes. There is a breadth of research across that. In third and fourth year, in particular, when we start to build in that interdisciplinarity and cross-disciplinarity that speaks to the likelihood of our students being able to cross sectors and being able to work across multiple spaces, we very often find that there are some instances where that works really well online, but there is also still very strong evidence in terms of students learning across those discipline spaces that we build into year three and four. In instances like that, as well things like labs and research projects, there is still a greater value to the students' learning when they come on site. However, the Deputy is right, it is about that evaluation every time regarding the most effective way to support student learning and where it is best placed. It is a constant dialogue that we have in all our organisations because we are very cognisant of all the things the Deputy talked about. Things like commuting times and costs are foremost in our minds as well.

Erin McGreehan (Louth, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

It is very clear that our universities operate very robust quality assurance and programme development. They take the systems they have in place very seriously and with huge ambition. It is very welcome that there is a focus on integrated learning, placements and the development of transversal skills such as critical thinking, digital literacy and teamwork. I am very ambitious for our universities. Universities have been changing and adapting for hundreds of years. They have changed how they work, who they teach and what they teach. There is a strong precedent for technological change, industrial change and every sort of change. Universities have adapted to all of them. I often find that older generations often underestimate our young people and our students, and we all do that at our peril.

Underfunding has been a constant theme in many of this committee's conversations about universities and higher education. It is a constraint to the sector. In concrete terms, what are we missing out on? What are our students missing out on? What is Ireland Inc. missing out on by not funding our university sector equal to the ambition that it has?

Mr. Paul Johnston:

I will give a very general answer and then I will allow my expert colleagues to fill in the detail. We think at the moment that the funding deficit is something in the order of €240 million a year. The Government agreed in the Funding the Future report to close the gap, which had then been identified at about €307 million. It has sort of halfway closed that gap, but there is acknowledged to be about €50 million of unfunded pay awards, and another €50 million shortfall that has arisen from the growth in the size of the student population which has not been matched by the structural funding. It means that there are management challenges for the universities every year, particularly when some of the pay awards are not fully funded.

There is also a big opportunity cost when you hear of all the things we are doing and the ambition we have to do even more in the way of enterprise-focused high-quality research. New money is coming into the system. We very warmly welcome the so-called INSPIRE programme for research infrastructure. When we look at the tremendous opportunity that the country has from a meta perspective, Ireland has benefited massively from being an open, liberal economy that is open to international investment. However, allowing from my previous job as well as this one, we are moving into a world now where we are probably heading into deglobalisation, greater geopolitical problems and a greater emphasis of technology, as well as having to supply-chain and reshore closer to home. This a country where the highly educated workforce and the resilient society are our core national assets. In a world where there are lots of things we cannot control, one thing we can control is how much we invest in our young people and not so young people. For us, it is about our level of ambition as research-intensive, enterprise-engaged and socially aware universities. We could do so much more for society, the economy and our students if that structural funding gap was closed. That is a general perspective, but I am sure my colleagues have more they would like to add as well.

Professor Vincent Wade:

From a Trinity perspective, we just launched Thrive, the strategic plan for the years from 2025 to 2030. Underpinning that is a digital transformation within the university and those infrastructural costs are not there. The other thing is our commitment to lifelong learning and looking at new ways of making the walls much more porous for adult learners as well as new learners in different ways and for short periods. To do the sort of transformation that the country needs, we need to invest in our people and that means the education of our people. The third area is research. One of the things that people may not realise is that as we have more PhDs, it is not just about the PhDs; it is also about the attraction that it brings to the whole ecosystem and brings people through. We have funded quite a number of PhDs. It is not quite clear what we are doing in the next programme, but it is really important that we do. A lot of our universities are really looking at the problem of accommodation and how they can ensure that students feel that they belong and have the space. That means reconfiguring our spaces and the way in which we are looking at accommodation for our students so that they do not become a burden on everyone else and so forth, as well as providing appropriate accommodation. Those are things which really need to be looked at.

Professor Blánaid White:

When we had the HCI funding, we had a tantalising view of what we could achieve with the right-sized funding. If I take DCU as an example, through HCI funding we were able to develop new programmes, one of which was psychology and disruptive technologies, which explores the impact of human behaviour on our new technology-informed world and what the next level of that technology should look like in a way that supports human behaviour. We had the first BSc in chemistry with AI in the world, which was fabulous in terms of developing our students to graduate into the pharma sector, a space where they could harness the affordances of AI because we had built it into our programmes. All those things, including the transversal skills development that we mapped across our curricula, were enabled by that brief opportunity to look at what right-sized funding might look like in the teaching space, and it is comparable for research.

We see that, and then we see our inability to systematically and structurally continue to be transformative in the types of education offerings we afford to our students in the absence of that funding.

Professor Stephen Byrne:

I agree with my colleagues on the digital and physical infrastructure investment. One of the aspects we would aspire to deliver is an entrepreneurship and innovation space, and expose all of our students to entrepreneurial activities to further develop and create opportunities for the SME sector to grow from the institution. We have these visions and plans. If we had the appropriate funding, it would enable us to do that. The HCI funding would enable us to do that. The HCI funding provided a huge opportunity to work with industry and other institutions nationally to deliver really innovative programmes.

Erin McGreehan (Louth, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

We hear that message very clearly and we thank Professor Byrne for it. The Minister will be in front of the committee soon and we hope to be able to raise those issues with him. All of us, across all parties, are right behind the witnesses. On behalf of the committee, I thank the witnesses for engaging and attending the meeting. We will now suspend briefly to allow the witnesses to depart.

Maeve O'Connell (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I had another question.

Erin McGreehan (Louth, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Apologies, Deputy, I did not notice. I will rewind the tape.

Maeve O'Connell (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The witnesses are not off the hook yet. Our Chair summarised all of that very well. I would be keen to see more of the HCI funding. An excellent question was asking about where the focus of funding was and at what it would be addressed. I have two questions on that. Is targeted funding the better way to go? That has been the traditional way, as in that the HCI funding can be used for X, Y and Z. My other question is about staffing. About one in five staff are on temporary or short-term contracts. Obviously, a certain amount of flexibility is required in any business but is that partly driven by funding or is that the level of flexibility the universities like to have?

Professor Stephen Byrne:

The reasons for short-term staffing contracts are mixed because the short-term targeted funding does result in specific purpose or fixed-term duration contracts. They may be also aligned to EU-funded projects. If five-year funding for a specific project is secured, the contract link will be to that direct funding initiative on the research side.

On the Deputy's first question on whether targeted funding is the right way, I think it has to be a mixture. We do need some targeted funding initiatives to foster and challenge us to explore new opportunities that may succeed and may not succeed because that is a valuable lesson. There is the core funding and the underfunding of the pay awards. Addressing that core deficit would enable the universities then to flourish further.

Professor Vincent Wade:

I agree completely. In regard to core funding, the universities have ambition and unique ideas of how they can support Ireland and its population, but we need to be able to do that from the core. We should have targeted funding for specific things but without a mix of both, we will end up reducing one and constantly doing little bits and pieces. What we want and really need is funding to a core level to allow us to enhance our infrastructure and offerings and then targeted funding for specific things, such as the HCI that was mentioned.

Maeve O'Connell (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I have a follow-up question. In terms of targeted funding, the physical space was mentioned. There are a lot of old-fashioned spaces, which are wonderful and we all went through them, but they are not really suitable, as Professor Byrne said. He is trying to put extra staff in there. I cannot even imagine how that would work in the Boole Basement lecture theatres. Do we need funding to adapt those and convert them into more suitable teaching areas?

Professor Stephen Byrne:

The short answer to that is, absolutely yes. We also need funding for the sustainability agenda to upgrade the buildings. In UCC we have over 140 buildings and we have a mapped-out agenda for our carbon footprint and how we will upskill and retrofit the buildings. There is a project there. The Deputy rightly identified the Boole Basement lecture theatres. They accommodate 350 people and what you can do with those spaces is very restricted. Enabling those to be more flexible and agile would be of benefit to society but also to the learners.

Fionntán Ó Súilleabháin (Wicklow-Wexford, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

It has been alarming to hear that almost a €250 million is needed to bring universities up to an acceptable level. Has the Irish Universities Association made a strong, vociferous case to the powers that be for such funding? The second question was on rud éigin a dúirt an Teachta Connolly níos luaithe ansin faoin nGaeilge, what he mentioned about the Irish language. As we know, tá an-spéis ag mic léinn ag an tríú leibhéal sa Ghaeilge faoi láthair. There is a massive interest among students in having services and courses in Irish. Cén pleananna atá ag na hollscoileanna chun freastal ar an éileamh sin? What plans do the universities have to meet such a demand? Has the Irish Universities Association been discussing that?

Mr. Paul Johnson:

I can lead on the first question. It is the job of the IUA, with the universities, to make the case to a wide range of audiences. One of the many reasons we welcome today's session is to make the case for our ambition but also for the need for the sector to be adequately funded. It is also to note that the funding gap on one level is being closed but also that that gap is stretching all of the time due to inflation and other things. We recognise there are a whole set of pressures on public expenditure but it is our job to make the case. Later today, I will attend a meeting of IBEC chief executives because the business community has very important advocates for the skills and research agenda. It is not just big business. We have been doing events with the SME community as well and wider members of society. We make the case in as many different ways as we can. We will be launching a new IUA strategy for the next five years in the coming weeks and that will be another opportunity, as will our pre-budget submission. It is a continuous, rolling campaign of making the argument, and that will continue.

On the Irish language question, I will defer to my colleagues.

Mr. Paul Johnston:

I will give a small example. In DCU we have a school Fiontar agus Scoil na Gaeilge, which looks to develop programmes. As Professor Byrne mentioned, our core focus is in the education space but in Fiontar we are looking at areas around business, computing, IT and being able to create offerings. The Deputy mentioned planning. The extent to which we can make plans, in the absence of funding to be able to build them out, is really restrictive. That is the single biggest constraint we have, sectorally, in terms of looking to explore and expand out in the space. There is an acute demoralisation from trying to make plans and be very ambitious and excited about them, while knowing they will not come to fruition in the absence of that funding. That is our biggest constraint in that space.

Fionntán Ó Súilleabháin (Wicklow-Wexford, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

It would be tragic if there is such a demand among students ar son na Gaeilge, and among the witnesses, but they are restricted by funding. Would they make that case strongly that they cannot respond to the interest students have due to the lack of funding for something an Irish Government should be funding?

Erin McGreehan (Louth, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Go raibh maith agaibh and, again, apologies. On behalf of the committee, I very much thank the witnesses for attending and engaging with us. We will now suspend briefly to allow the witnesses to depart before moving into private session to deal with housekeeping matters. Is that agreed? Agreed.