Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy complains that I have not heard her when I say I do not agree with her. It is not that I have not heard the Deputy or have not understood her. However, there is room for legitimate difference in this area. NUIG has huge commitment to the Irish language but it has made its decision. I have not repeated what I said before. I went through many of the commitments the university has made, what is at the heart of its strategic plan and the fact that it has a very detailed execution strategy to make that plan happen, which is really ambitious and something to be welcomed.

This, however, is not to say that a university should confine its selection of its president to solely those who speak Irish. The university is one of the top 250 in the world and it wants to recruit from a much wider potential pool of talent. Who knows who will be selected? The person may well have competence in Irish but the university wants to select from a broader pool. The selected person may learn Irish, as Deputy Connolly advocates, and that would be a great thing. The Deputy is looking for me, as Minister, to issue a direction to an independent authority to reverse a decision it has made on a unanimous basis. That authority, as the governing body of the university, is best placed to decide what is in the best interests of NUIG.

The Deputy is not hearing what I am saying if she feels that I am not hearing what she is saying. I understand what Deputy Connolly is saying but the governing body has taken a different view. Its view is consistent with delivering the support structures to the Irish language that we need. Clearly, the governing body has an obligation and we will be making sure that whoever is selected as president continues to deliver on the university's obligation to the Irish language. That will be a duty of my Department and the Taoiseach will have a role to play in that. The authority has made a decision that, in selecting the president, it wants to have the widest pool of potential candidates available to it. I have no objection to its decision in this regard.

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