Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Under his stewardship and that of the Minister, we will hopefully see another technological university in the mid-west. Ennis in County Clare has the capability, structure and character to be a university town. The Limerick Institute of Technology opening a campus in Ennis this time last year was a significant incremental step towards developing its potential. Ennis is famous for culture. Clare County Council appointed the first ever local authority arts officer in the 1980s or early 1990s. We have hosted the most successful national Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann in recent times.Ennis is the capital of County Clare and its traditional cultural, arts and music areas. The town has a cultural heart which fits in well with being a university town. The observation by LIT of that link and its potential was a clever move. The campus in Ennis is going exceptionally well, although people are working and studying from home now, unfortunately. Its birth and first three months were enormously successful. The retail and business community in Ennis was extremely happy with it. The birth is over and the baby steps have been taken. We now need to build on that.

Education is so important. The Minister of State's fellow Limerickman, Donogh O'Malley, has been mentioned previously in the context of what can be achieved through education, and that percolates into business. Most of the European head offices of the technology companies are based in Ireland and five of the seven leading pharmaceutical companies have their European head offices in Ireland. That did not happen by accident. It came about because we have a highly skilled, flexible workforce with transferable skills as a result of what is, by and large, free education in this country. Let us look at the cost of education in other areas of the world, such as the United States. If anybody in this country who has the ability and achieves the points comes from a family who cannot afford to send him or her to college, the State will step in and provide the necessary financial support. That is revolutionary in its own right.

This programme of rolling out technological universities will bring more people into the educational sphere for longer. It will encourage people who are talented and skilled in their own right, but who might have thought of taking a different route, such as going abroad or pursuing a career internationally, to look at Ireland and the raft of courses, skills training programmes and other opportunities that exist here. Other speakers referred to the silly competition that exists between third level institutions. We are a small island and we all need to be working together. We must pool our resources. The pooling of resources to date has resulted in us being so competitive that we have been able to attract five of the seven leading pharmaceutical companies to locate their head offices to Ireland. If we continue to work together and pool our resources, we will become a world-class economy. That is what education can achieve in this country.