Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy will probably be aware that there is substantial debate around the reliability of the various commercial global rankings and their capacity to capture the quality of higher education institutions. All international league tables vary greatly in how they rank universities and none captures the level of performance information that we are now tracking for the first time. The first ever performance report on the higher education system was published this year. Despite the challenges faced by third level colleges, it showed that the system was performing well. Having established a baseline performance, we will now be able to track whether the system gets better or worse on an annual basis. Overall, it is important to note that every university in Ireland ranks in the top 600 universities across each of the league tables, putting all of our universities in the top 5% of universities across the world.

Regarding the 1% reduction, this is already part of the budgetary figure for 2015 that was published in 2014. The Deputy will appreciate that in line with normal practice, we are unable this week to comment on issues relating to the budgetary process, although we might be able to discuss it more next week. I have been clear, however, in that we are seeking to secure funding to meet the significant demographic growth in our education system and not to reverse previous budgetary measures.

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