Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank all of the Senators for their contributions. There is a great depth of knowledge and experience within Seanad Éireann. Some Senators have in-depth and hands-on experience of working in our education sector. That is a great asset in dealing with the great challenge facing the Minister, Deputy Harris, and myself in operating this new Department. The challenges Senators have articulated are well known and are not simple to resolve, as I believe we would all agree.

Some have asked why the Department is being set up. My party leader, the Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, and our party have long been of the view that a Department of the State dedicated to the area of further and higher education, science, innovation and research was needed to connect people from the education sector with the workplace and to further educate and upskill people.It is important to point out, and we all need to keep this to the forefront of our minds, that while we know higher education is hugely important, so is further education. I refer to the non-high-profile parts of our education and training systems: the apprenticeships, the traineeships, the likes of Limerick College of Further Education, the PLC courses, the work the ETBs now do, having taken over the former FÁS training centres, and the work SOLAS now does.

Part of the discussion I have been having with the Minister, Deputy Harris, and what he has been saying to me, even at the most basic level, is that when it comes to Estimates and budget discussions later in the year, we will go to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform as a Department with a dedicated focus on the further education, training, science, research and innovation sectors. We will not go in as the Department of Education and Skills has done, with its basket of issues mixed in with the basket of issues that will come under the remit of the new Department. The current Department has issues such as pupil-teacher ratios, challenges in the provision of new schools and so on to deal with. It is a good thing we are setting up a stand-alone Department for those reasons. It was very refreshing and welcome that during the Government formation negotiations, both Fine Gael and the Green Party agreed with the vision which was outlined in this regard by our party and my party leader.

Many issues have been raised by all those who spoke. We have taken note of them and I will bring them to the attention of the Minister, Deputy Harris, and discuss them with him. Obviously, the funding of the sector is critical to its future. Many Senators have raised, rightly, the issue of the Cassells report and the fact that it is on a long journey. We know where it is at present with the European Commission. Senator McDowell rightly pointed out that there is no magic money tree. Hard decisions will have to be taken regarding the future funding of the sector in the coming months, no doubt, and that decision and discussion will have to be had at various levels. There will come a point in time when that will have to be done. I agree with the views and sentiments expressed by many Senators that the sooner that happens the better, but we have to get it right and recognise the environment, particularly the financial environment, within which we are now operating in light of the backdrop of the Covid pandemic.

A number of speakers mentioned the fact that we launched the further education and training, FET, strategy last week. This is an integral part of the work SOLAS is charged to do on the provision of training, particularly the roll-out of apprenticeships, the identification of gaps, specifically skills gaps, and the provision of the courses, apprenticeships, models and traineeships to identify those gaps. We will come forward with an apprenticeship action plan in the coming months. This will seek to deal with the commitments within the programme for Government to ramp up the number of apprenticeships we can make available to people; the issue of the range and types of apprenticeships, and the areas that do not have apprenticeship scheme options at the moment; and some of the negatives within the apprenticeship model, specifically a gender imbalance. The plan will also seek to encourage people who come from different communities - for example, a Traveller background - to become engaged in the apprenticeship processes and the offerings we have. Yesterday, as Members will be aware, €168 million was announced to assist the further and higher education sectors to deal with the reopening of colleges and campuses in September. While we have been debating here, I have been looking at the news feed. The Minister, Deputy Harris, has been meeting the Irish Universities Association and the Technological Higher Education Association, THEA, representing the institutes of technology and technological universities. They have confirmed to the Minister, in welcome news, that they will be in a position to open in September to provide induction to first year students and to roll out a programme for engaging in college life in a way which will be, I hope, as normal as possible. We are dealing with the new normal, as we know, and each college will have its own set of circumstances and challenges which it will have to try to deal with.

I will give the House a breakdown of some of the moneys announced yesterday for the record. A sum of €168 million was allocated to assist the reopening. To break it down, a sum of €14 million is being made available to reimburse many of our institutions for the effort they made in the front-line response to the national Covid crisis and the work and research they did, particularly on personal protective equipment, PPE. A sum of €41 million is being made available to ready the campuses for the return of students. There is a sum of €34 million to assist colleges and institutions in dealing with their online and digital provision because, as we know, that will be a significant feature of third level education and further education and training across the online platforms. A figure of €48 million is being made available to the existing research projects in the system. There is a recognition that they have to continue. We are aware of the importance of research. For students, and I wish to acknowledge that this has got a pretty broad welcome, €15 million is being made available for the purchase of laptops, tablets and Internet connectivity to assist them in their return to college. There is €3 million for the provision of mental health supports to students. The student assistance fund is being doubled from €8 million to €16 million, and €2 million is being made available to support a fund for students with disabilities and minority groups such as members of the Traveller community who wish to avail of third level education. In addition, and I do not have the detail to hand but I am sure we will all pick it up when we leave this session, the July stimulus is at present being announced, and I am sure there will be further detail and information in that regard. I am reading on the news feed that there is a figure of €5 billion being made available and 50 actions.

One or two other items were mentioned. The technological universities constitute a huge project which is happening in various regions. Reference was made to the planned Munster technological university, MTU, that is, the Cork-Tralee link-up. We have a similar project in my part of the country, with Limerick IT and Athlone IT; in the south east we have IT Carlow and Waterford IT; and there is the Connacht Ulster Alliance. The Cork-Tralee project has progressed and the others are progressing at various stages. We know what the process is as to how these projects can advance and the role of the independent assessment committee.That will be a positive development for our third-level landscape.

On FDI we know of the hundreds of thousands of job that many multinationals give people in this country, providing well-paid employment. There are many reasons FDI companies locate in this country. Much of it is to do with the depth of research talent and availability within the country. We are an EU, English-speaking, common-law country and many companies see it as an entry point to the EU and locate here for that reason. Many also located here over the years for tax reasons and much of that was argued and articulated as part of the recent Apple tax case and judgment. However, primarily, they came here for the available pool of skilled labour. That is a testament to our entire education system, to our third-level institutions and to our FET institutions. That is a factor in them coming here and a reason we need to continue to invest and promote, improve and support them into the future. I will not be able to cover everything that was said but I have taken notes of some of the issues and the requests for the Minister to meet the group in the north west. That will be forwarded.