Technological Universities Dail Éireann — 2026-07-02 ============================================================ James Lawless (FF), Kildare North Advancing the technological university, TU, and institute of technology, IoT, sector is a major priority for Government, and for me. This is evidenced by significant targeted investment over many years and demonstrates our commitment to balanced regional development, building research and innovation capacity and with it, Ireland’s global competitiveness, all while increasing access to university education for more students and delivering it on a regional basis as the TUs are doing. My Department has provided extensive funding and support to aid the TUs that are undergoing extensive and complex transformation programmes. Most recently, I announced allocations of up to €65.8 million under the targeted enhancement fund, TEF, to support the continued transformation and strategic development of higher education institutions in the technological sector and publicly funded specialist colleges. That TEF funding is to enhance that offering in terms of capabilities and everything from information technology, IT, systems to project management and human resources management, and make sure they are fully strengthened and given the capacity-building supports they require. At this point, legacy management structures in the IoTs, have transitioned to new cross-campus executive university management structures in four of the five TUs. The predecessors in the IoTs have been amalgamated into cross-campus executive teams. The final one, South East Technological University, SETU, is in transition and is currently being assessed. These roles are critical in supporting the TUs to deliver the strategic missions. Additionally, I expect to see further progression now that I have sanctioned a new professor grade for TUs, which I secured Cabinet approval for just last December. That will support the TUs in their engagement, education, research and innovation capacities. I have also distributed over €223 million in capital funding to the sector across a variety of programmes over the past term, and I continue to work on the metrics under the TU Act, working towards the ambitions to make sure they are an absolute success. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-07-02/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:52:14+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-02