Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

As part of the process, the Higher Education Authority has written to all the institutions, including the institutes of technology and other third level colleges. The authority has given the institutions six months to respond to the recommendations of what is known as the Hunt report, the review of higher education that my predecessor and the Administration of which Deputy Smith was a member published in January 2011. They were given six months to indicate what they intended to do and where they envisaged their future, including whether the various institutes of technology wished to link with another institute of technology to pursue the prospect of becoming a technological university.

Ireland has seven universities and the Dublin Institute of Technology, which is assumed to be similar to a university although it does not have the categorisation or title of a university. The report recommended that we do not need any more universities given the population of 4.6 million in the State. However, there is merit in the concept of a technological university. The criteria required by an institution to reach the status of a technological university were published in the formal reply in February. It will be up to individual institutions to decide whether they want to have a crack at going for it. They will indicate whether they wish to do so within the six month period. The responses will be evaluated in the course of another six months. Therefore, 12 months from having received the letter, they will either get the go-ahead to go to the next stage or otherwise. If we get an indication from an institution that it wishes to proceed and the proposal is credible, then the necessary legislative frameworks will be put in place.

However, I emphasise that the decision to confer technological university status on any group or cluster of technological colleges will not be made in the House and it will not be decided politically. It will be decided by an international review panel that will review the application by any group or groupings. It will examine the criteria we set out in advance. These are available if anyone wishes to examine them. A decision will be made by the international advisory group established on objective criteria and the group will advise the Minister of the day.

I wish to explain the political thinking behind this. In Britain, Maggie Thatcher re-labelled every polytechnic as a university. One can come across the University of East Lancashire and so on. In the process, this devalued university status among the mainstream universities in the United Kingdom. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge will always be "Oxford" and "Cambridge" and the University of London and the London School of Economics will have their status, just as Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin have a certain status here. However, the other universities will be devalued by a political decision, as happened in Britain. I have no intention of going down that road. Institutions should be granted the status on merit. I hope Members share that view. The process has been laid out. The expectation is that the south-east colleges will come together. I am aware informally that this is their intention. However, a process must be adhered to and I have laid it out.

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