Liam Fitzgerald (Fianna Fail)

It is fitting and appropriate that Deputy Mary Hanafin should be the Minister to bring this Bill before the Houses of the Oireachtas. Perhaps I might indulge in some brief reminiscences. I was honoured to serve on the VEC-DIT with Deputy Mary Hanafin. I do not know if I am allowed to talk about someone not present, but perhaps Senator Tuffy might give me permission through the Chair to mention her father, who was the third level education officer in DIT during our reign on the VEC-DIT. I mean it as a compliment rather than to cause offence. It is both appropriate and interesting that the Minister, Senator Tuffy and I are monitoring the passage of this Bill. Deputy Carey succeeded me as chairman of the VEC in 1988. I hope that I am not leaving anyone out.

I congratulate the Minister. It is great to see that, only months into her term, she has brought forward this phenomenon, which must be the biggest single educational project in the history of the State. I compliment the Taoiseach and the Minister's predecessor. They had the tremendous vision of an array of possibilities and potential, bringing 39 complexes from over 30 sites into a single complex in the north inner city of Dublin. I pay tribute to the Taoiseach and those in the Government at that time who created that vision and decided to pursue it.

If I may I wish to go back before them to the tremendous vision of the pioneers of vocational and technical education. They had such an innovative, pioneering spirit that, charged with responsibility for second level vocational education, they envisioned the evolution of that spirit into third level. To have that, they must also have had a tremendous vision of the phenomenal contribution those areas of vocational and technical education, and related areas of the sciences, would make to the future development of the country. If they were only alive today — I suppose that some still are — they would see the phenomenal contribution the DIT in particular, the biggest third level institution in the State, is making to the Irish economy.

I salute the DIT for its varied specialties, its precedents and the pioneering areas it has developed and brought to the fore. It has achieved firsts and exclusives in several areas. It has never excluded people, having always promoted inclusion. I congratulate the Minister and the DIT. This is a new dawn for third level education. I do not care whether the organisation pushes for university status. It has created such a unique and distinctive place —"niche" connotes something small — in third level education, contributing to and linked with technological, industrial and commercial life, that it has already made its statement. I wish it well from here.