Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Lowry. I agree with him that a massive amount of work has been undertaken. I think more than 20 working groups are working across 30 different work packages to try to get to this point. I want to thank the project directors and the joint chairs from AIT and LIT for what have been years of work. It is up to them, but it is to be hoped that they will arrive at a point where they can submit an application to me very shortly. I believe they are trying to do that by the end of the year.

The timeline the Deputy referred to is laid out in the 2018 Act. Once I receive an allocation I have up to four months to appoint an expert advisory panel from nominations provided by the Higher Education Authority, HEA, and Quality and Qualifications Ireland, QQI. The panel reports to the HEA within four months of its appointment and the HEA must report to me within a further two months. That is ten months in total. I then have up to two months to make a preliminary decision. A period of up a year is involved. These are maximum deadlines. It all depends on many things happening and going right. In theory, if an application was submitted by the end of the year a decision could be made by the summer of 2021 and it would be possible that a new technological university, subject to all of the approval processes, could be established in 2022.

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