David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for telling us about the good work that is going on and the money being made available. Does he accept the finding by the Irish Universities Association in an investigation it launched recently that one third of the equipment in Irish universities is older than the original iPhone, that is, more than 16 years old, and more than half of it is over a decade old? Does he agree that this limits universities' ability to compete at the leading edge in domains of research that rely on such equipment to build in the areas of most current relevance to industry and to attract the best researchers and support them to succeed? How much would be required to bring all our third level institutions up the required modern standard? Does the Minister of State agree that having equipment that is more than 16 years old, making it out of date, is not good enough and is putting us at a really poor competitive advantage relative to our competitors?

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