Shane Ross (Dublin South, Independent)
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Question 173: To ask the Minister for Education and Skills his views that quality assurance is being complied with in Irish third level institutions; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [33343/11]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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Quality assurance processes in Irish higher education institutions operate to best international standards. Universities are primarily responsible for their own quality assurance procedures and have delegated their statutory obligations in relation to reviewing and reporting on the effectiveness of their procedures to the Irish Universities Quality Board (IUQB). In the institutes of technology and independent colleges, the Higher Education and Training Awards Council (HETAC) agrees and reviews quality assurance arrangements. The National Qualifications Authority of Ireland (NQAI) acts as the external quality assurance agency for the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) and the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland (RCSI). All three bodies have been independently reviewed by international panels and have shown to be successful in implementing their functions.

The IUQB is currently completing a second cycle of Institutional Reviews of Irish Universities and reports on four of the seven universities have been published in the last two years. NQAI recently published its second review of DIT and is preparing for the first review of RCSI. Since 2009, HETAC has published reviews of all thirteen institutes of technology as well as reviews of ten other higher education institutions for which it validates programmes. Each of these processes results in recommendations to the institutions for the improvement of their quality assurance and a systematic published follow-up on the institutions' implementation of the recommendations. The reports are readily available on the agency websites.

While each of the agencies has worked well, a new single qualifications and quality assurance agency is currently being established. This will bring a unified focus to external quality assurance in higher education, establish a closer link between quality assurance and the standards underpinning awards on the National Framework of Qualifications and provide for thematic quality reviews on a cross-institutional basis.