John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)

I welcome Ms Trina Vargo to the House. She is not supposed to wave but many strange things have happened in the Chamber this week and, therefore, nobody will worry about that. I worked with Trina in the US Senate while George Mitchell was a member. We both worked as staffers. The work she has done since setting up the US-Ireland Alliance has been amazing. It is good that she is present and I congratulate her on her work.

I do not have a difficulty with the Bill. This great programme has worked well for some time and I am glad the Government is funding it. The figure of 119 students caught my eye because I have been involved in recent years in bringing American students to Dungarvan, my home town and it has been a rocky road. I was interested in Deputy Quinn's comments about attracting US education institutions to invest in Ireland and the job the Government is doing in this regard. My experience has not been great and I have been through this process dealing with countless Departments trying to obtain State aid for an American institution, which has made it clear it wants to spend millions of dollars in this country. The level of help provided by different Departments has been poor.

In two weeks, 26 undergraduate students will travel to study in Dungarvan. The level of funding we have received to date from local or national government is €5,000. The students are coming to study for three months. The idea is that the number of students will double to approximately 50 or 55 next year. The number of faculty members will increase from six to ten next year. That is pretty significant for a town like Dungarvan. Throughout this process, I have been curious about the mantra of encouraging innovation and attracting niche ideas to Ireland. In the past couple of years, massive amounts of money have been provided in the budget to deal with this kind of stuff. I got involved in the process. The Mercyhurst College authorities explained the area in which they want to get involved. We are in competition with three other European countries. Mercyhurst College wants to base its intelligence studies campus in Europe. Frankly, there was not a great deal of interest shown. I met representatives of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, the Higher Education Authority, the Department of Education and Science, IDA Ireland and the Office of Public Works. I brought officials from Mercyhurst College to Dublin to meet these people. At the end of that process, they displayed a level of frustration I had not seen before. Certainly, no real effort was made to seriously examine what these people are willing to bring to Ireland. It is a niche area.

See this speech in context