Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)

I have just returned from a visit to China where I visited nine universities and met the minister for education who has responsibility for 166 million students. While I may like to believe this little island on the edge of Europe is foremost in everyone's mind in China, Singapore, Malaysia and India, that is not the case. People in the countries I have visited or am about to visit regard Irish education as a brand. It is a valuable brand internationally. Ireland's biggest export to China is education. If we are to stand over this brand internationally, we must have some form of quality assurance process that we can all stand over. In selling the brand internationally to Chinese, Malaysian and Singaporean students we need to be able to state that, as a nation, we are proud of what we have achieved and can trust the quality assurance process underpinning educational provision.

Why would the universities have collectively established the Irish Universities Quality Body, IUQB, if they did not see merit in the quality assurance process it provides. I reiterate that it was never proposed that members of the new quality assurance body would sit in on lectures.

Significant savings will accrue from the amalgamation of the various quality assurance bodies. In 2008, for example, the Higher Education and Training Awards Council, HETAC, Further Education and Training Awards Council, FETAC, and the National Qualifications Authority of Ireland, NQAI, had a combined staffing level of 110. This figure that has since reduced to 88. It would not have been possible to maintain an acceptable level of service to learners and providers with a 25% reduction in staff had it not been for the pooling of resources and integration of corporate supports underpinning the institutions in question that occurred in preparing for the amalgamation of these institutions. The annual Exchequer allocation to the various bodies has declined from slightly more then €13.5 million in 2008 to slightly more than €7.5 million in 2012. This has been achieved with major co-operative efforts between all the bodies in preparation for amalgamation. The amalgamation will, therefore, deliver significant savings and I hope these savings will be channelled into precisely the areas Senator Barrett suggests.