Further and Higher Education
Dail Éireann — 2025-03-27
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Catherine Connolly (IND), Galway West

I welcome that there is a date, but there is the history and the fact that the ETB was twice asked to revise downwards its plan and its vision. We attend regularly meetings on updates with GRETB. I keep calling it the old VEC. In any event, there is cross-party support for this. It looks like the ETB is being forced to accept the 10,000 sq. m, even though it was asked to reduce it even more. There will be a phase 2 sometime in the future. That was never anticipated. It was anticipated it would be all one project. And what is going into phase 2? Apprenticeships, the Irish language and the potential there to upskill people in the public sector because of the Official Languages Act and other legislation and because Galway is a bilingual city and because the Gaeltacht comes under the remit of what I call the VEC. For the life of me, I cannot understand what analysis was done as regards the request - the order, really - to reduce. April is the deadline for a "Yes" or "No" to the business case, is that it, and then the other steps come in?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-03-27/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:53:39+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-03-27