Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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82. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if his Department has undertaken any research aimed at determining from which faculty graduates are most and least likely to emigrate. [27022/24]

Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael)
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The tertiary education and research system supports learners to achieve internationally recognised qualifications which prepare graduates for careers and further learning, both in Ireland and internationally.

The outcomes of higher education graduates, including outcomes relating to international mobility, are tracked through a number of sources.

The Higher Education Authority publishes data annually on early graduate destinations in the nine months after graduation, with graduates in employment broken down by Location of Employment and Field of Study.

Of the 2022 graduate cohort who were employed nine months after graduation, 93% were employed in Ireland and 7% overseas. Of these, arts and humanities graduates were the most likely to be employed overseas at 10.6%. It should be noted that these figures represent a point in time, and often migration can be temporary.

The Central Statistics Office has led on the development of the Educational Longitudinal Database which links education and graduate data with key administrative data from across government. This provides a mechanism to track long-term migration patterns including return dynamics.

To date, the Central Statistics Office have provided detailed reporting on health graduate outcomes over a ten year period following graduation. For the 2011 class of ‘nursing and midwifery’ and ‘medicine’ graduates just over one third of each cohort were likely to have moved overseas for at least one of the ten years following graduation. 14% of all medicine graduates and 10% of nursing and midwifery graduates were overseas for more than eight years during that time period.

Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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83. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the action he is taking to increase access participation in Professional Master of Education programmes. [27058/24]

Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael)
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I wish to advise the Deputy that policy and regulatory questions relating to the Professional Masters in Education, and the teaching profession more generally, are a matter for the Department of Education and my colleague Minister Foley.

However, the Deputy will be aware that my Department does support access to Initial Teacher Education (ITE) for targeted priority groups under the Programme for Access to Higher Education (PATH) 1, as part of the National Access Plan. The objectives of PATH 1 are to increase the number of students from under-represented groups entering ITE and provide more role models for students from these groups. PATH 1 supports a range of new initiatives and partnerships, and it is expected that these activities will result in increased students from under-represented groups participating in ITE programmes.

A fund of €5.4million has been provided under PATH 1 since 2019 which is allocated to seven Centres of Teaching Excellence across the country who run projects to encourage students into the Teaching profession.

Students on the PME courses are also entitled to apply for the SUSI grant, distributed by CDETB on behalf of my Department, which supports students on their journey through education.

In 2022/23 there were 607 students in receipt of SUSI who are registered on the PME programmes.

I trust this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.