John Cummins (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Cathaoirleach. I start by welcoming the decision of the President to apologise to Professor Louise Richardson during the week. Professor Richardson was awarded the freedom of Waterford city in 2019 for her work. She hails from Waterford and has an extensive and distinguished career. The comments which were made were unfortunate but, at the same time, I welcome the apology that was issued.

On the Order of Business, I also welcome the announcement made by the Ministers, Deputies Harris, McConalogue and Donnelly, this morning on the expansion of healthcare and veterinary medicine places across the country. A very important decision has been made by Government to invest in these additional places across our universities sector. It is very positive that South East Technological University, SETU, has been given the green light to proceed to the next stage on the provision of additional nursing places, as well as veterinary medicine and pharmacy places. That is a very positive development and I commend the team led by Professor Veronica Campbell at SETU on putting forward very robust bids for all of those places. There are some who say SETU should be somehow afraid of competitive calls. This has clearly demonstrated that the team at SETU are able to compete at the very top level and I wish them all the best in the next stage of the process of expanding these courses because not only will it retain talent within the region but it will also attract talent from outside of the south-east region. I, therefore, commend the team at SETU.