Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Question 26: To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if he is satisfied that lecturers at third level are participating in adequate class contact, lectures and tutorials, in view of recent commentary attributed to him; if there is a general system of monitoring teaching hours in third level colleges; if there are specific requirements in respect of such hours for individual staff; if such requirements vary depending on the seniority of the staff; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10216/12]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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Individual higher education institutions have autonomous responsibility for the management of staff resources. While teaching hours norms are specified under standard agreed contracts for academic staff in the institute of technology sector, in the case of the university sector there would be a variation of individual teaching loads as part of overall academic duties.

Under the terms of the Public Service Agreement (Croke Park), from the start of 2011/12 academic year, university academics are required to provide an additional hour per week to facilitate teaching and learning and to co-operate with academic workload management and full economic costing models to improve the quality of information available for resource management in universities. In the Institute of Technology sector, lecturing staff, where required by management will deliver up to an additional two hours per week above the current weekly norms with an additional hour per week of availability to students.