Third Level Education
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-11
============================================================

James Lawless (FF), Kildare North

I will take Deputy Burke's question first and then come back to Deputy Timmins. Regarding the Northern Ireland dimension, I am glad the Deputy raised this important point. Unfortunately, with the UK leaving the European Union, Northern Ireland is not eligible for Erasmus programmes. However, the Government supports Northern Ireland students to allow them to continue to participate. Northern Ireland students are funded by the Republic to partake in Erasmus. We have done that repeatedly in recent years to ensure students there have the opportunities available to students elsewhere on the island. I am proud we are able to do that on an all-Ireland basis.
I take the Deputy's point about the potential for a placement in a Northern university and vice versa . I mentioned a few moments ago the Queen's University Belfast and Dundalk IT collaboration under which we will have the first all-island university very soon. The next question goes to that issue and I will speak more on it when we reach it. I will respond to Deputy Timmins shortly.

---

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/2025-12-11/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-11