Andrew Doyle (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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223. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the measures agreed during the Irish EU Presidency regarding the new University ranking system U-Multirank; the measures and steps taken to ensure the new system across EU member states is fair and transparent; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [36230/13]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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The new phase of Multirank was launched by the Commission in Dublin at a major higher education conference on Increasing the Visibility of Quality in Higher Education, held at the end of January.

I understand that its implementation is gaining pace and that U-Multirank has now exceeded its target, with more than 600 universities and colleges now having registered their interest from right across the EU and from a total of over 70 countries worldwide. This is a very good start indeed.

The challenge now is to ensure the effective collection and analysis of the data, so that the first ranking can be published next spring. In the meantime, I feel it is important that we maintain our efforts with our institutions so that the second ranking to be published in 2015 gives an even broader picture of our higher education systems and I wrote to the Ministers for Education in all member states urging them to encourage participation from a wide range of higher education institutions in their countries at the end of June.

U-Multirank is on the right track to provide a better guide - for governments, institutional leaders, students and employers - to the performance of our higher education institutions and those involved are making enormous efforts to avoid the pitfalls in terms of methodology and biases that are the hallmark of many other ranking systems. I am looking forward to seeing it grow and develop over the years.