Seanad debates
Wednesday, 5 November 2003
National Development Plan Mid-Term Evaluation: Statements.
In the pursuit of a degree-led culture, we have lost sight of much industry-based operations. I consider this in terms of Northern Ireland. We lost an extremely good polytechnic for questionable value. The same is happening in the regional technical colleges or centres, which were the drivers of economic change and were hugely important. The number of people who are now going into soft degree options must be examined. We might also look, rather more than this report was capable of doing, at the all-island capacity to discover to what extent scarce resources can be used to complement each other. There is a tendency among the economists to look for organisation and control. That is important. There is no point in throwing money into black holes.
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