Lisa Chambers (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

In the programme for Government, there is a commitment to the equality of access to education and to an increase in the number of opportunities available. The Minister recently appointed a working group to look at the future of the GMIT campus in Mayo to ensure its future and sustainability. It now appears that the GMIT management have pre-empted the outcome of the working group. They have now told certain members of staff who were on certain courses that have been axed or cut from the offering at Mayo GMIT that they must "voluntarily" move to Galway and that if they do not do so, they will be redeployed elsewhere in the Civil Service. This seems to be totally at variance with the working group that the Minister established only a number of weeks ago.

I wrote to the Minister and asked him for the terms of reference for that group, the time it should report by and who will be in it He failed in his reply to me to answer any of those questions. Is the Minister going to ensure the working group gets an opportunity to do its work? Is he going to ask GMIT management to desist from moving staff, which is essentially a downgrading and an asset-stripping of our GMIT campus in Mayo?

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