Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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63. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills his plans to increase co-operation on a North-South basis in the further and higher education sectors. [51806/17]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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A major objective of my Department is to contribute, in the context of the Good Friday Agreement, to the development of North-South co-operation and common action in the field of education.

North-South Co-operation is a priority activity identified in the Programme for Government. In this context, the strengthening and deepening of co-operation in education to achieve effective and efficient delivery of educational services for the benefit of all the people of this island remains a primary goal. 

Work to date has included developing, within the framework of the North-South Ministerial Council, common policies in the designated areas of special education needs, educational underachievement, teacher mobility and school, youth and teacher exchanges.

Departments North and South have also been mandated to explore the potential for further areas of co-operation in education not within the existing NSMC framework. To that end there has been significant engagement and cooperation at Ministerial and official levels on higher education and skills issues in recent years covering higher and further education strategies and policies; legislative and institutional reform; funding of higher and further education; access/student mobility issues; cross-border student flows; research; and possible collaboration on EU funding programmes.

At institutional level, there is a broad range of cross-border collaboration particularly in research and innovation, which has been supported by EU funding programmes and national research funding programmes in Ireland. I will work to support the continuation of this valuable collaboration.

A key challenge for future North-South engagement will be how we manage the impacts of Brexit on our respective education systems in such areas as cross-border access to education; teacher and academic mobility and future collaboration on the island in research and innovation programmes.

In this context consultation is fundamental to my approach and I had already met and discussed these issues with the then Northern Ireland Minister for Education and the UK Secretary of State for Education. In addition my Department met with UK and Northern Ireland officials on a bi-lateral basis earlier this year and ongoing contacts are being maintained with NI and UK officials.

It is my aspiration that, with an eventual agreement in Northern Ireland on the restoration of the power-sharing executive, we can regain the momentum on North-South cooperation in higher and further education.