Further and Higher Education
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-02
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James Lawless (FF), Kildare North

I thank the Deputy for his invitation to visit that day, along with the Minister of State, Deputy Niamh Smyth. We had a very good engagement in Cavan and then visited the institute. I share the Deputy’s desire to see the college of the future advance at pace. I hope to have a positive announcement on that in the near future. I will certainly be keeping Members apprised of that. It is my intention that the institute would be able to appoint a design team in the coming months, and that we are able to progress with that project, which is much needed. I could see that myself when visiting the site and speaking to learners and educators while traversing the school that is already there. They are doing great work, which will be enhanced by the provision of a capital project for the further training centre, which I hope to be able to support strongly in the coming months. That is a very important project on which I will continue to work.
More broadly, as part of the shared island initiative, there are other projects that fall under the ambit of the Queen’s-DkIT partnership that I intend to support. I also intend to further advance the collaboration on a North-South basis. As I mentioned already, we recently launched the first all-island apprenticeship for accounting technician, and there are a couple of others that are being considered. Where possible, I intend to roll that out and increase the capacity.

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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