Gabhaim buíochas leis an Teachta Ó Snodaigh agus leis an gCathaoirleach Gníomhach as ucht na ceiste seo. Freagróidh mé i nGaeilge í, ach ós rud é nach bhfuil mo chuid Gaeilge chomh láidir le Gaeilge an Teachta Ó Snodaigh, rud a bhfuilim ag obair go dian air chun feabhas a chur air, freagróidh mé na ceisteanna forlíontacha i mBéarla agus cuirfidh mé na freagraí ar aghaidh chuig an Teachta i nGaeilge ina dhiaidh sin. Tá ról tábhachtach ag ár gcóras ardoideachais maidir le tacú le húsáid na Gaeilge agus í a chur chun …

An bhfuil mé thar am? Ceart go leor.

Gabh mo leithscéal as Béarla a labhairt sa supplementary but I must do so for the sake of the accuracy of the reply. My Gaeilge is not quite as líofa as an Teachta Ó Snodaigh's, although I am ag foghlaim mo Ghaeilge arís gach lá. I completely agree with the Deputy about the 5,000 students coming through and the need for provision to match that at every level of the system. Given the increased interest agus an méid suime i measc páistí in oideachas through the medium of Gaeilge, it is something that I want to suppor…

Cinnte. Cloisim everything the Deputy says. Táim very much aware of the issues that he raises. There is a lot of sense there and I will take that on board.

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Teachta. I thank the Deputy for his kind words and equally offer him comhghairdeas on his election. It is good to see him here representing Kildare North. With regard to the student accommodation in Maynooth University, at the outset I should say again that I fully appreciate the importance, and am committed to the provision, of high-quality, affordable, multioption student accommodation because we need to enhance the student experience. That is not just a woolly goal. It means cutting comm…

I fully agree and share the Deputy's ambition for Maynooth. For that reason, I immediately made inquiries about progressing that project when I took office. A total of 116 student beds will come on stream this year in Maynooth. The university will be first to come out of that programme. I am also meeting the university president, Professor Eeva Leinonen, tomorrow. I will be visiting Maynooth for an event tomorrow, which the Deputy may also be attending, where I will meet the president. I have met her a number of ti…

I will respond in reverse order, taking Deputy Conway-Walsh's points first. I am not sure I accept that there is a line of student accommodation strategies from here to Mayo. Student accommodation was not a government function until very recently, when it came into my Department. It is an easy thing to throw out in a debate but I do not know how accurate it is. I presume the Deputy will agree that we need to reduce the cost of provision, which means we can do more with less. I presume she also agrees that we need t…

Indeed. I am actively engaged with the university and will be there again as soon as tomorrow. I hope there will be ongoing engagement into the future.

I am aware of the Deputy's ongoing advocacy for all things Dundalk, and, indeed, for Louth. We have discussed her interest in this matter previously, most recently when I attended the opening of the new FET centre in Dundalk, which involved a very significant Government commitment of almost €30 million in the education space for the region. I was delighted to open the centre, along with Deputy McGreehan and other colleagues. I am familiar with Dundalk Institute of Technology. I had the opportunity very recently to …

Regarding the policy framework, I do not foresee any blockage. However, there is a technical difficulty, which is why DkIT has not already been subsumed. The Technological Universities Act 2018 provided that two or more institutes of technology could jointly seek technological university designation through a process. At that time, a number of applications were invited. DkIT's governing body did not pursue that option at the time. We have to respect the autonomy of institutions and decisions made by their governing…

As I said, I have had an informal meeting with the president of DkIT. I have studied the situation and am very familiar with it. DkIT is something of an outlier in that most of the ITs have been assimilated at this stage. The direction of travel is to have stronger collaborations in order to achieve a sum that is greater than the parts. That is already being done very successfully in many of the TUs around the country. DkIT is working away with Maynooth University and that collaboration is progressing well. The Dep…

As the Deputy correctly noted, the European directive on the mutual recognition of professional qualifications ceased to have general applicability to UK award holders post Brexit, that is, after December 2020. Qualifications from the UK were automatically recognised during the transitional period, which ran from 1 February to 31 December 2020. If a qualification was recognised during that time, the professional can continue to practise in Ireland or the EU. While this overall formal framework no longer applies to …

I thank the Deputy. On her last point about the constituent's query, if she wants to send that to my office I will happily take a look at the details of it. I will say, based on prior knowledge before I was ever a Minister in this Department, the Teaching Council has a particular set of requirements. Somebody even within the State may come a cropper - the Deputy mentioned, I think, philosophy or some of the courses. There is a very specific set of requirements around undergraduate subject choice and then usually a …

On the Deputy's Teaching Council case, I will take the details away but it is not uncommon, unfortunately, that people have different levels of accreditation or recognition within the system, notwithstanding the Teaching Council registration. I am not going to make any comment on the individual's situation. I do not know but if it is of any assistance, I have come across a case in my own constituency work in the past and that is not uncommon at all. Often it depends on the actual original qualifications pursued, or…

For which professions?

I think we can because my own sister is a doctor who qualified in Australia and returned to Ireland and is now practising. It is evidently happening, from personal experience. On the wider arrangement, I recently spent time in India on a St. Patrick's Day trade mission. I was engaged on the reciprocal arrangements there, of which there are many. We have a reciprocal arrangement with multiple states around the world. If there are particular gaps, I am open to hearing about them. It was not in the original question s…

I thank Deputy Kenny, and I will treat with the programme for Government commitments and the rest later. I would be interested to know whether the Deputy agreed with the rest of my comments in that article because I did talk about targeted supports. I talked about addressing the cost of education and improving access to education. I talked about the existing support schemes and whether they should be widened or revisited to ensure the net is cast exactly where it needs to be. Are they even progressive supports, tar…

I thank the Deputy. We are in a new Government; I am a new Minister. We have had an election. The outworking of that election is a coalition Government. Not every policy of every party is going to be fulfilled. No party won a majority.

Yes, the programme for Government will be honoured. The programme for Government commits to a reduction in the student contribution fee in a financially sustainable way, which I will do, of course. I am not going to renege on a programme for Government commitment. I am going to follow it fully but how do we do that? Is it abolition, as Deputy Boyd Barrett argues for? That is €1.5 billion every Government term. How many student accommodation beds could we build for €1.5 billion? How many courses could we provide, an…

Donogh O'Malley or many others could be referenced in this debate. My party has always prized education and put it to the fore. Education is the bridge to all that we do as an economy and subsequently as a society because it is the private enterprise, created by a successful education system, that creates the public good and the resources that we then use to support the public good. Deputy Kenny touched on the many competing challenges and the many potential alternative pathways through this in his supplementary qu…