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

It is fair to say to Deputy McConalogue that the rankings are a reality and they must be responded to. International business organisations involved in foreign direct investment take them into account, although the academics maintain they can be gamed and played and that they do not tell the full story. If it was true that funding alone and the reduction of funding was the dominant factor in falling rankings for universities, then all our universities would have fallen. One cannot rationalise that assertion with the fact that some universities have gone up and others have fallen. That is not to say that we have a financial problem with our universities and third level institutions. This is why, rather than what might appear to Deputy McConalogue to be the case, the sustainability study is being undertaken by the HEA. We are obliging all third level institutions to enter into a serious reconfiguration of their structure and landscape. Deputy McConalogue will be familiar with this. Letterkenny Institute of Technology in his constituency is now linked with the Institute of Technology, Sligo and Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology to form the Connacht Ulster alliance. I would be happy to have a debate about this at some stage should Members wish it.

We do not have too many universities, but we probably would not build the same number of universities today if we were starting from this point and given the position of those built more than 100 years ago or 30 or 40 years ago.

However, 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, we did not have the infrastructure or communications system. In this context, close to 69% of Irish students live at home and because they so do, they are able to attend third level institutions. Were one to centralise them or to spread them further apart, one would put enormous pressure on many young people and their families in trying to go to such institutions. Deputy Eoghan Murphy and I represent a Dublin constituency in which, on a short count, we have access to approximately seven or eight third level institutions that are within a bus ride away from our homes. This is not the Irish average.

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