Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)

One of the proposals in the paper we produced last week is that we would extend the excellent idea of George Mitchell scholars to other parts of the world in the next few years.

I am grateful to the Minister of State's Department which sent me, on foot of my request on Committee Stage, a detailed breakdown of the number of scholars under the George Mitchell scholarship fund initiative in each year since 2001 and it showed the variety of colleges, North and South, in which they studied. It is important that scholars be allowed to study in programmes in the institutes of technology in the next few years. While Trinity, UCD, UL, DCU, the Queen's University, Belfast, are the typical traditional colleges, we have an opportunity to market many of our excellent institutes of technology during the next few years. That would be good for them and good for the scholars.

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