Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will attempt to get the figures rather than hazard a guess across the floor. A huge increase in productivity is evident when one matches the reduction in funding with the increase of student numbers. That has possibly resulted in the deterioration in quality of some services, although that has not been brought to my attention. It certainly shows there is an extraordinary capacity to absorb increased numbers. We do not know if quality is maintained.

The purpose of the exercise I described in a previous question comes from the fact that in some areas, the Department of Education and Skills and the Higher Education Authority do not know these answers. We had 19 separate providers in the educational teaching and training sector and we are now proposing to reduce those to six. We do not know how many engineering courses are being delivered across the entire spectrum, and we must find that out concisely. We could hazard a guess but we cannot give precise descriptions of those engineering courses.

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