Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats)
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1273. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the steps he is taking to ensure that the recently announced €24 million funding for an additional 4,620 college places will be directed to employ full-time permanent teaching staff. [40185/21]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Last year more than 2,250 additional places were provided in order to offset the particular pressures faced by the higher education system. My Department is working with the HEA and the Higher Education Institutions to identify where there is scope for additional places to be provided this year. All bodies involved will continue to work to ensure the availability of a full range of options for applicants in 2021.

As part of this work, support will be provided for additional roles within the higher education sector to protect against significant erosion of the staff/student ratio within institutions. This will be in addition to the demographic funding which is more broadly applied to support the capacity of the system at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and which has been seen to deliver stronger retention in recent years.