It is a priority of mine to make higher education more accessible, as I have been saying in reply to earlier questions. Part of this is the cost of accommodation, the cost of putting a roof over everyone's head, and making sure that the students are ideally as close to their college as possible. I firmly believe that the student experience and the college experience necessitates, and is enhanced by, being proximate to the college and having the opportunity to not only be in college for classes, but to attend extrac…

I have indeed sat down with the Minister for housing. We had a number of good interactions over the past year, and particularly when he announced his intention to bring forward the reform of the rent pressure zones and to legislate for that. We immediately engaged on that and we spent a long time working out the details of how that would affect students. One of the outputs of that is the special protection regulation for students specifically stating that student-specific accommodation is safe from the regular rent…

I have ongoing engagement with the Minister for housing and we have had a very structured and productive engagement, which led to the student exemption and the protection window of three years being imposed in the new rental protection Acts. I hear the issue that the Deputy raises. I have written directly to one or two institutions where I was made aware of this practice. I advised them that I did not feel this was in the spirit of the law, while within the letter of the law. It certainly is not within the spirit o…

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Teachta McGettigan. Aithníonn mo Roinn an ról tábhachtach atá ag earnáil an oideachais threasaigh maidir le cur chun cinn agus cothabháil na Gaeilge. Tá réimse cúrsaí ar fáil do mhic léinn trí mheán na Gaeilge ar fud na hearnála treasaí. Is iad na hinstitiúidí féin a dhéanann na cinntí sin i gcomhréir lena neamhspleáchas acadúil. Léiríonn anailís a rinne an tÚdarás um Ard-Oideachas le déanaí gur chláraigh 420 mac léinn i gcúrsaí a sholáthraíodh go hiomlán trí mheán na Gaeilge sa bhliain aca…

Níor cheart go mbeadh imní ar an Teachta faoina cuid Gaeilge, táimse ag foghlaim chomh maith. Maith thú as an bhfoghlaim. We will learn together. It is commendable when anyone attempts it. To meet the target, the goal is to have a workforce capable of speaking at least partly as Gaelige, but ideally 20% would have a strong ability and competency. A wide range of courses is available already. Some are fully in Irish, some are partly through Irish and there can be combinations. Course provision is determined by the i…

I know Conradh na Gaeilge well. I will be meeting its representatives in the near future to discuss their submissions and requests. I am very supportive and I hope we can do as much as we can for them. I mentioned some of the actions we are taking. There are a couple of specific actions we are taking to meet the target. We are working with the Department of Education and Youth to examine the transition of students from Irish-language post-primary education because we know there is a huge growth in the bunscoileanna…

I worked all the way through second level and third level and afterwards. Then I ended up studying while I was working, so I did it both ways round. I totally appreciate the industriousness and the necessity in many cases for students to work through their education. How we have it structured is that under the SUSI grant scheme, income from employment that represents holiday earnings outside of term time is calculated on the basis of Easter holidays, summer holidays and Christmas holidays. This can be disregarded w…

They do not need to leave Kerry any more at all, because we have a fine university in Tralee with MTU. I visited it recently with the Minister, Deputy Foley, and Deputy Cahill and we saw it in action. Professor Maggie Cusack and the then chairperson, Jimmy Deenihan, welcomed us to the facility. The university is providing world-class services. If students do want to leave Kerry, however, there are course options available to them. I know it is expensive, and I talked earlier about the recent cuts we have implemente…

As I said at the outset, I worked all through college at a variety of things through weekends, evenings in some cases, and all through my summers and, indeed, often Christmas and Easter holidays as well. I would make the point to the Deputy that there is nothing stopping students from doing that. Students can work, and they can choose. It equates roughly to Christmas holidays, Easter holidays and summer holidays. However, if students want to say they are going to work every weekend instead or work one part of the y…

I thank the Deputy very much. He mentioned AI and skills shortages and understanding the new trends that are emerging in higher education and across training our graduates and, indeed, our apprentices. That is an absolute priority for me and the Department. We are doing a lot of work on skills and identifying skills needs and skills gaps, working through SOLAS, the National Skills Council, the expert group on future skills needs and other groups and agencies. I have done a couple of things in recent times. One is t…

The Deputy is exactly right. One of the interesting outputs of the inaugural skills round-table I held about six weeks, which had the accommodation sectors at it, was that there was a common theme. Regardless of semiconductors, biosciences, pharmaceuticals or construction, there was a common theme. They said they want to be able to hire graduates, trainees and skilled workers who have broader skills, such as communication skills, teamwork skills and the ability to work on a team, analytical skills and strategic ski…

There are a couple of things. I recently launched a website called aiready.ie . The Deputy might have tried it out. I urge anyone who has not already to do so. That website is specifically targeted at short AI familiarity skills. It is not necessarily building up to expert user level but building up an awareness of AI and how it works - how it can be used, for example, in a small business, for personal use, planning a holiday packing list, organising an event, etc. It is the intention that it will help with that. T…

I am aware of the Deputy's interest in this. I am pleased to be able to advise the Deputy that I have met the presidents of both UCC and MTU on a number of occasions. I have also visited both institutions on a number of occasions and, indeed, I will do so again this week. I am very aware of how the supply and affordability of accommodation is impacting students in Cork and more generally across the country. That is one of the reasons I was very pleased to be able to publish the national student accommodation strate…

I totally agree with the Deputy. We need to see significant progress and we need to see it soon. On the theme of progress, we saw 206 beds with a commencement notice issued only last month in Cork. There are 3,000 around the country since I launched the strategy approximately six weeks ago. Approximately 206 of those are in Cork, and they are badly needed. There are another 1,700 beds in Cork with planning granted which I hope will become viable through the strategy. There were a number of beds at sites around the …

I am conscious of this and I have met all the technological universities, TUs, on it. It is a programme for Government commitment and it is one I have given effect to through the student accommodation strategy because the strategy includes provision for nomination agreements. Nomination agreements are technical arrangements, but they allow the technological university to take on a contingent liability upon its balance sheet which could be construed as a State liability. It is something that we are supporting throug…

As the Deputy will be aware, under legislation, the Irish higher education institutions are autonomous in their decisions and the processes they follow in relation to admissions, and rightly so. They operate without political influence in terms of their admission criteria and enrolment. Both public and private institutions, all use the CAO, which is well understood, to centrally process the applications for most undergraduate programmes. Further information on how that works, including statistics and data from prev…

I am just clarifying. The Deputy's question asked about the courses in which maximum leaving certificate points did not guarantee admission due to demand and he has moved on now to high-points courses. The difference between maximum and high-points is that it is a meritocracy. Rightly or wrongly, the CAO system awards courses on the basis of points. A student had maximum points and missed out on a place, which arose in one instance this year for a course that I mentioned. The other scenario I talked about is where …

Not to my knowledge. My Department does not collect data on the number of international students or the share of places offered through the CAO on a course-by-course basis. That falls under the remit of the individual autonomous higher education institutions and they determine that annually. The Deputy may wish to correspond with them to make his own inquiries. I reiterate my point because the scenario he is depicting is suggesting that some students have been displaced by international students coming into the sam…

In actual fact I do not have the information.

It is because these are autonomous institutions that manage their own course and manage their own systems within it. The Deputy is welcome to correspond with them, if he has not done so already, to see what information he can derive. Every student who wanted a course, bar one, got into a course. In the latest CAO round, there was one student in one course in entire country. It is regrettable and I would prefer if no students missed out. I think that we can agree that out of 108,000 students, one student missing out…