Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)

As Deputy Donnelly points out, the issue of rankings has been a hot topic in recent weeks as both The Times and the QS rankings have been published. Ranking systems in general must be interpreted with a certain degree of caution as criteria differences or even slight changes in the weighting given to a particular criterion between one set of rankings and another can have material differences on outcomes on different league tables. For example, Cambridge University came out top of the QS rankings while Caltech tops The Times latest higher education rankings.

This is evident when we examine the relative positions of Irish universities in these two rankings. Trinity College Dublin, for example, sits at No. 65 in the QS rankings but at 117 in The Times rankings. These anomalies generate significant debate around the relative importance attached to rankings criteria and on their capacity to fully capture the quality of what is on offer in a higher education institution. Notwithstanding these reservations, it is recognised that league tables are referenced by international investors, employers and students as a marker of quality across systems and, as such, they cannot be ignored. We can continue to draw some encouragement from the fact that two institutions in Ireland are still in The Times top 200 higher education ranked institutions and four Irish institutions were in the recently published top 300 QS ranked universities, out of some 15,000 universities worldwide.

There is naturally a focus on the fall in the ranking positions of Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin on The Times latest HE table, notwithstanding their continuing strong showings which places them in the top 1% of institutions worldwide. It must be recognised that efficiency improvements across Irish higher education institutions have been a necessary part of their response to the changed economic climate. In this regard, staffing reductions have been achieved simultaneously to increases in student numbers. These efficiency gains have been delivered for the benefit of Irish students and taxpayers. It is acknowledged they also have a related impact on the ratings of Irish institutions based on The Times HE ranking criteria, given that those criteria include direct input measures of staff student ratios.

Even in a climate of managing public service numbers and costs, it is important to emphasise that the operation of necessary staffing restrictions in the higher education sector has been implemented in an exceptional manner that maximises the latitude of institutions to fill front-line posts and maintains their freedom to fill externally funded and revenue generating posts. While some higher education systems have invested heavily in elite institutions and adopted a policy of differentiated support for different tiers of institutions, our focus is on sustaining and advancing performance across the system.

In this regard, we can draw a degree of encouragement from the overall performance of the Irish system on The Times latest HE system performance tables which place Ireland firmly in the world's top 20. We are ranked 17th overall and are ranked 6th in the world relative to our GDP. It is also encouraging to note that in separate international measures of system performance, the Irish higher education system ranked first out of 28 countries in terms of the way international employers rate our graduates for employability. We also ranked highly for the efficiency of our system.

I am anxious to move the debate around the performance of our higher education system on to a more outcome focused space. The overall quality of the graduates we produce and the responsiveness of our institutions to a range of external demands is what we must concentrate on. The strategy we are now embarking on for the development and reform of higher education aims to enhance autonomy, innovation, accountability - to which the Deputy referred - and performance across the system. It is an important agenda and I thank Deputy Donnelly for raising it today.

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