Marc MacSharry (Fianna Fail)

I am grateful for the opportunity to make some points on this issue. I welcome the OECD report. It is timely to have a review at this stage. Moreover, there is no better person in either House than the Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Hanafin, to make the necessary improvements and changes as Ireland evolves and requires more specific and strategic planning. It is clear from speaking to the IDA, Enterprise Ireland or any other agency that human resources are the most valuable currency in the procurement of foreign direct investment into the future. We must seek to breed, create and attract more intellectual property. In order to do so effectively, it is clear many of the recommendations of the OECD report will have to be adopted.

I have some concerns regarding the institutes of technology. As Senator O'Toole rightly pointed out, I would like to support the possibility of a university, or a group of institutes becoming a university, being established north of the line between Dublin and Galway, particularly in the context of the national spatial strategy. It is vitally important that, in any implementation of any of the plans in the OECD report, the institutes of technology have equality of status with the seven universities. The proposal for two committees with one chair under the new body which is to be set up is a good one. However, if statutory instruments are required to establish the committees they should not be too rigid in order that institutes of technology could respond in terms of fulfilling their remit by reacting to the needs of the students and by filling the various voids in the regions in which they operate.

The term "mission drift" is one of those new phrases like "going forward". In the case of mission drift, the mission should not be too clearly defined in terms of either type of college. I fundamentally disagree with my colleague, Senator Fitzgerald, that doctorates should only be within the gift of universities. That feeds into the issue of the area north of the line between Dublin and Galway. There was a very heated debate about St. Angela's College in this House but there is no constituent college of the NUI north of the line between Dublin and Galway. We are very proud to have St. Angela's in Sligo, we have excellent institutes of technology in Sligo and Letterkenny, as well as GMIT. We could also examine the possibility of cross-Border institutes, taking in Fermanagh or Derry, as well as St. Angela's College to establish a group of campuses to form a north-western university or something to that effect.

I realise that may be difficult but it needs to be acknowledged as an aspiration and we should seek ways in which we can make it a reality. If we are ever to achieve our aspirations under the national spatial strategy, we will have to examine the issue of creating critical mass in the region and, in order to do so, we must have the full range of educational facilities available which includes university status of sorts.

I would like to see the institutes of technology having increased autonomy in terms of expenditure, specifically in terms of how that expenditure is used on infrastructure. A number of the institutes of technology have driven good initiatives through their own strategic plans and we should examine and salute the many positive developments which have derived from them rather than knock them down. Traditionally, there has been an issue with the elitism of the universities being compared with the innovation of the institutes of technology, thereby creating two tiers. We need to move away from this view.

Although this is a debate on the OECD report on third level education, Senator Ormonde referred to second level, the points system and how many people have to sit the leaving certificate several times in order to qualify for a course they want to study. I did not attend a third level institution because I did not achieve the points required for the courses in which I was interested. No other facility was open to me. I know people who studied medicine because it required the highest number of points. Although such people might have had the academic ability to achieve those points, they had the acumen of librarians.

While we are examining second level as part of a bigger plan, we need to seek to introduce a greater focus on nurturing and harnessing the natural entrepreneurial flair which exists in young people and which we are losing. If we could do that, we could breed our own icons and role models, rather than always looking to the likes of Michael Dell or Bill Gates.