Results 3,581-3,600 of 45,291 for speaker:Simon Harris

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Third Level Education (22 Jun 2023)

Simon Harris: Under the terms of the Student Grant Scheme, grant assistance is awarded to eligible students attending an approved course in an approved institution who meet the prescribed conditions of funding including those relating to nationality, residency, previous academic attainment and means. In relation to support available for students studying abroad, the Student Grant Scheme provides...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Technological Universities Act 2018: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (21 Jun 2023)

Simon Harris: Thank you. I will first comment briefly on the situation at St. Angela’s in Sligo, which is the subject of the first part of the meeting. I am pleased to introduce the draft order, the Technological Universities Act 2018 (Section 44F) (Appointed Day) Order 2023, to the committee. This draft order provides that the higher education institution known currently as St. Angela’s...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Technological Universities Act 2018: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (21 Jun 2023)

Simon Harris: I thank Deputy Mairéad Farrell for her broad support on this issue. Being a Deputy from the west, I know she appreciates the regional importance of this issue as well. The benefits are many. First, I think it is a certainty, for a long number of years I think it is fair to say, that many in St. Angela's have felt they have been left in a degree of limbo-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Technological Universities Act 2018: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (21 Jun 2023)

Simon Harris: -----as they wondered where that college would ultimately end up in the context of the changing landscape of higher education. Settling the question, if nothing else, is of benefit to staff and students. Second, from a critical mass perspective, the institution will now be joining a large entity and one that is fast becoming recognised as a superb technological university. This critical...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Technological Universities Act 2018: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (21 Jun 2023)

Simon Harris: -----and I think the borrowing framework should become a part of that conversation.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Key Issues in Higher and Further Education: Discussion (21 Jun 2023)

Simon Harris: Unless the committee wishes it to be otherwise, I am going to be very brief because it has my opening statement and I would rather get into the back-and-forth exchange on the issues. Today, we published details of the expression of interest process in respect of the Higher Education Authority, HEA. This was a major body of work and everyone has worked so hard on getting us to this point. I...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Key Issues in Higher and Further Education: Discussion (21 Jun 2023)

Simon Harris: I thank the Deputy. Her points on digs are fair and measured. It genuinely is a matter of balancing the imperative to maximise the accommodation available to students with ensuring students are safe and treated with respect and dignity. Renting a room is working for thousands of students every year. I hear that from students but I also know purely from the numbers that go through the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Key Issues in Higher and Further Education: Discussion (21 Jun 2023)

Simon Harris: Every euro we put into student accommodation we expect to be returned in the form of below-market rents. Let us say we are funding 30% of a college's development. We then expect at least 30% of the beds to be provided and ring-fenced below market rent. We see in the data every year that student accommodation is oversubscribed, even with current market rates. I think Maynooth University...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Key Issues in Higher and Further Education: Discussion (21 Jun 2023)

Simon Harris: We are finalising those arrangements at the moment. I can give the Deputy the information as soon as we have it. We know definitively that from the proportion we fund, we will get at least that proportion of beds back below market rent. We need to work out the actual level of the rent with the institutions and I will keep the Deputy informed on that.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Key Issues in Higher and Further Education: Discussion (21 Jun 2023)

Simon Harris: The answer is "Yes". Every university in Ireland needs to see the provision of student accommodation as a core part of its work. I can say that because it is not the State just saying it, as we are willing to get involved in part-funding it. In fairness to the technological universities, this is a new space for them. Institutes of technology, which the TUs were before, never built student...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Key Issues in Higher and Further Education: Discussion (21 Jun 2023)

Simon Harris: I acknowledge the new president of UCD has been really proactive in this space and I thank her for that. We need to get to common design around student accommodation. I have spoken to students and student unions about this. They often tell me they are being asked to pay for facilities that have things in them they did not ask for. We are trying to get to a point of common design and are...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Key Issues in Higher and Further Education: Discussion (21 Jun 2023)

Simon Harris: I have heard that concern and met some of those researchers. I hope through the conversations we have had and will have as we scrutinise the Bill and go through Committee Stage we can address that. I see it as the opposite to that for this reason. The Irish Research Council, which does incredible work, does not exist in statute. It was established by a letter from a Minister. It could be...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Key Issues in Higher and Further Education: Discussion (21 Jun 2023)

Simon Harris: It is my intention that anybody appointed to the board will come through a process. I am a big believer in that. Probably the Public Appointments Service is my thinking at the moment. I am happy to think further if there are informed views on how best to do that. I have an open mind on that one.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Key Issues in Higher and Further Education: Discussion (21 Jun 2023)

Simon Harris: I had the honour of being Minister for Health for four and a half years so will resist straying into the current Minister for Health’s space today, other than to say I know from conversations with him he is very much aware of the issue. As we significantly increase medicine places, that is one part of it; retaining the talent is another. I hear about positive experience in hospital...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Key Issues in Higher and Further Education: Discussion (21 Jun 2023)

Simon Harris: I thank my colleague, Senator Dolan. I think she is in favour of balanced regional development anyway. She is passionate about it, as am I, and we talk about it regularly. One of the successes of the Department in its three years of existence has been trying to bring university education into the regions. I love going to the north west and west to towns that are now university towns and...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Key Issues in Higher and Further Education: Discussion (21 Jun 2023)

Simon Harris: That is so.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Key Issues in Higher and Further Education: Discussion (21 Jun 2023)

Simon Harris: Anything within reason.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Key Issues in Higher and Further Education: Discussion (21 Jun 2023)

Simon Harris: I thank the Deputy and join him in acknowledging the success of the SETU. I also acknowledge that he has been an enormous supporter of the university. We have gone from no university in the south east to one. We have moved from an aspiration in respect of the Waterford Crystal site to having secured it, with plans coming on for student accommodation. Whatever happens beyond this point,...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Key Issues in Higher and Further Education: Discussion (21 Jun 2023)

Simon Harris: I am conscious that the first job was to establish the TUs, and a great amount of work has been done by an incredible number of people to get to this point. We are now going through the process of assessing projects that are under way and may require, for example, an extension. The HEA and my own Department are considering what other funding avenues may be available. I am thinking in...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Key Issues in Higher and Further Education: Discussion (21 Jun 2023)

Simon Harris: We in the Department are in the same place as the Deputy on the evidence of how he has presented the situation. We need to see a step change in research capacity in the TUs if they are to achieve their full mission. That will certainly require professors. It will also require an opportunity for those contract discussions to take place. The Deputy will be aware that I brought the OECD...