Results 5,601-5,620 of 6,467 for speaker:James Lawless

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Institutes of Technology (27 Mar 2025)

James Lawless: Regarding the policy framework, I do not foresee any blockage. However, there is a technical difficulty, which is why DkIT has not already been subsumed. The Technological Universities Act 2018 provided that two or more institutes of technology could jointly seek technological university designation through a process. At that time, a number of applications were invited. DkIT's governing...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Institutes of Technology (27 Mar 2025)

James Lawless: As I said, I have had an informal meeting with the president of DkIT. I have studied the situation and am very familiar with it. DkIT is something of an outlier in that most of the ITs have been assimilated at this stage. The direction of travel is to have stronger collaborations in order to achieve a sum that is greater than the parts. That is already being done very successfully in many...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Qualifications Recognition (27 Mar 2025)

James Lawless: As the Deputy correctly noted, the European directive on the mutual recognition of professional qualifications ceased to have general applicability to UK award holders post Brexit, that is, after December 2020. Qualifications from the UK were automatically recognised during the transitional period, which ran from 1 February to 31 December 2020. If a qualification was recognised during that...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Qualifications Recognition (27 Mar 2025)

James Lawless: I thank the Deputy. On her last point about the constituent's query, if she wants to send that to my office I will happily take a look at the details of it. I will say, based on prior knowledge before I was ever a Minister in this Department, the Teaching Council has a particular set of requirements. Somebody even within the State may come a cropper - the Deputy mentioned, I think,...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Qualifications Recognition (27 Mar 2025)

James Lawless: On the Deputy's Teaching Council case, I will take the details away but it is not uncommon, unfortunately, that people have different levels of accreditation or recognition within the system, notwithstanding the Teaching Council registration. I am not going to make any comment on the individual's situation. I do not know but if it is of any assistance, I have come across a case in my own...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Qualifications Recognition (27 Mar 2025)

James Lawless: For which professions?

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Qualifications Recognition (27 Mar 2025)

James Lawless: I think we can because my own sister is a doctor who qualified in Australia and returned to Ireland and is now practising. It is evidently happening, from personal experience. On the wider arrangement, I recently spent time in India on a St. Patrick's Day trade mission. I was engaged on the reciprocal arrangements there, of which there are many. We have a reciprocal arrangement with...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Third Level Fees (27 Mar 2025)

James Lawless: I thank Deputy Kenny, and I will treat with the programme for Government commitments and the rest later. I would be interested to know whether the Deputy agreed with the rest of my comments in that article because I did talk about targeted supports. I talked about addressing the cost of education and improving access to education. I talked about the existing support schemes and whether...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Third Level Fees (27 Mar 2025)

James Lawless: I thank the Deputy. We are in a new Government; I am a new Minister. We have had an election. The outworking of that election is a coalition Government. Not every policy of every party is going to be fulfilled. No party won a majority.

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Third Level Fees (27 Mar 2025)

James Lawless: Yes, the programme for Government will be honoured. The programme for Government commits to a reduction in the student contribution fee in a financially sustainable way, which I will do, of course. I am not going to renege on a programme for Government commitment. I am going to follow it fully but how do we do that? Is it abolition, as Deputy Boyd Barrett argues for? That is €1.5...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Third Level Fees (27 Mar 2025)

James Lawless: Or indeed Donogh O'Malley or many others could be referenced in this debate. My party has always prized education and put it to the fore. Education is the bridge to all that we do as an economy and subsequently as a society because it is the private enterprise, created by a successful education system, that creates the public good and the resources that we then use to support the public...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Grant Payments (25 Mar 2025)

James Lawless: I have asked my officials to pursue this with their Welsh counterparts and I will revert to you separately in due course.

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Research and Development (25 Mar 2025)

James Lawless: I propose to take Questions Nos. 873 and 874 together. Ireland joined the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in 2018 following a Government commitment to initiate discussions with four international research organisations – the ESO, LOFAR, ELIXIR and CERN. Ireland has joined three of these organisations and is finalising an Associate Membership Agreement with CERN. A National...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Apprenticeship Programmes (25 Mar 2025)

James Lawless: A key pillar of this department's Action Plan for Apprenticeship 2021-2025 focusses on ensuring that the apprenticeship population more closely reflects the profile of the general population, which includes improving gender balance. As part of the implementation of the Action Plan for Apprenticeship, a €2,666 grant was made available to employers from January 2022 of any national...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Apprenticeship Programmes (25 Mar 2025)

James Lawless: I wish to thank the Deputy for her question, and the opportunity to inform the House about the work my Department is undertaking with sectoral partners to advance the use of modern methods of construction, or MMC. Greater adoption of MMC, an umbrella term for a range of innovative construction processes, is a key pillar of the Government’s approach to increasing innovation and...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: EU Funding (25 Mar 2025)

James Lawless: With regard to the particular project which the Deputy has referred to, this is not an area in which my Department has a role. The University of Galway is an autonomous institution within the meaning of the Universities Act 1997. Under this legislation, it is academically and administratively independent and is entitled to regulate its own affairs and administrative processes. As such, as...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Departmental Bodies (25 Mar 2025)

James Lawless: My Department oversees two bodies which have independent decision-making responsibilities. Below, is a list of the two bodies under my Department's remit which are quasi-judicial in nature:Student Grant Appeals Board - This is an independent appeals board created under the Student Support Act, 2011.The Higher Education Authority - This is a quasi-judicial decision making body for the...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Apprenticeship Programmes (25 Mar 2025)

James Lawless: SOLAS has investigated this matter and advised that an IT system blockage has resulted in issues with the release of results for apprentices within one specific group. SOLAS advise that it is prioritising the removal of this system blockage and anticipates a release of results for all affected apprentices by the end of March.

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Official Engagements (25 Mar 2025)

James Lawless: The Minister did not visit the University of Delhi during his recent visit to India.

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Irish Language (25 Mar 2025)

James Lawless: I propose to take Questions Nos. 881 and 883 together. Our higher education system plays an important role in supporting and promoting the use of the Irish language. The Higher Education Authority Act 2022 highlights the importance of Irish by placing a responsibility on the Higher Education Authority (HEA) to ensure that higher education institutions (HEIs) promote and use the language....