Third Level Education
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-09
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Patricia Stephenson (SD), Labour Panel

I thank the Minister and I take from his contribution that college management was included in the pathway and roadmap the entire time. The question is whether union representatives were included only recently or were they there throughout the discussions. Staff have been told there will not be pathways for them through SETU and its Carlow campus will not be offering the humanity and arts courses which Carlow College has. They are being told it is redundancy only and there are not suitable pathways for them.
I also have a question about the CAO. When did the CAO know that Carlow College would not be accepting new students for the 2026-27 intake? Students had been applying via the CAO. Can we have guarantees that internal recruitment processes for SETU will be open to academic staff from Carlow College? What specific redeployment and transfer opportunities will be facilitated by the Department? While I appreciate entirely that the Minister has said the management of Carlow College was on board throughout this discussion, the gap remains that staff very much were not and for the 87 staff who were not involved, this is brand new and shocking to them. It is like being hit by a bus for a lot of the staff. For a lot of students also it has come completely out of the blue.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-06-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:01+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-09