Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The budget will stand. I was in the University of Limerick recently where the Bernal project - J. D. Bernal was a world famous engineer from Nenagh many years ago - is under way. It is funded in part by Atlantic Philanthropies. The intention is to bring in ten world class researchers - five of whom are in situ. The project will have a significant output. I have been in UCD, Trinity College, UCG and UCC and all of them look forward in their own way to the future.

Grangegorman in Dublin city centre will be the forerunner of a new kind of technological university in the country. That is why it is important that colleges of technology get together in terms of their specialties, as they see them, to gain technological university status for the future. It is very important that they engage in that process. Otherwise, the world will pass us by. I see opportunities for considerable numbers of technicians graduating from institutes of technology and engineers of exceptional quality coming from universities. The future is very bright when one relates that to the cluster movement between the world of academia and the commercial world. All of those people who were in Dublin last weekend see Ireland as a melting pot for ideas for change and transformation for the future. Let us have a discussion about the matter in due course. I respect the sentiment of what Deputy Donnelly said but in response to his question, the budget decision in respect of university funding will not be reversed.

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