Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)

Everybody involved in education would accept that quality assurance has a role to play in education provision. The universities collectively would take that view as well. Each university has a quality office. The universities saw fit to establish the Irish Universities Quality Board. Those offices in each institution review each school and faculty on a cyclical basis and examine student involvement, course review, quality of design and delivery of programmes and the alignment of programmes with the learning outcomes associated with the relevant level of that programme and where it is at on the national framework of qualifications. As a country, if we are to stand over the NFQ as a framework, we must ensure that every course we place on that framework, from level 1 to level 10, satisfies the requirements of that particular level of the framework with which it seeks to align itself. Once we move away from the NFQ, we begin to compromise on the quality of the framework and its international reputation, and that is not good.