I will ask the Minister of State to respond on the apprenticeship matter. I will take up the issue the Deputy raised regarding Irish Sign Language. As she suggested, the Teaching Council is obviously independent of me and Government. I will, however, get a view from my officials regarding the course in Trinity College Dublin and revert to the Deputy with some suggestions as to how we might be able to raise that. She makes a very fair point. On the social care work issue, as I believe I outlined in my letter to the …

I thank Deputy Lowry for his questions. I also thank him for keeping in touch with me, the Government, Limerick Institute of Technology and Athlone Institute of Technology on this project. This is transformational. When we talk about Limerick Institute of Technology and Athlone Institute of Technology, people automatically think about Limerick and Athlone when the former obviously has a clear and firm footprint in Tipperary in both Thurles and Clonmel. This is going to be transformational for County Tipperary. As D…

I thank Deputy Costello for his paper and the proposal that he sent me and the amount of work that has gone into this. I will take up his offer to meet EPIC with him. I would welcome that opportunity. We want to break down barriers. We want education to be for all. I accept we have much work to do on that. Let us do that. The Deputy's proposal merits serious consideration. I wish to share with the Deputy some of the initial thoughts from my Department on this. Each higher education institution already has what we c…

I will respond to Deputy O'Connor as well, if that is okay. I thank Deputy Dillon for his questions. I am really excited about the development of this new university for the west and the north-west. It will be transformational, not only in terms of access to education but also in creating a real powerhouse for jobs, investment and regional development. When one looks at the map of Ireland, one can see the need for that level of investment. It will change the economic profile of the region. Of course, it will make C…

I thank Deputy Niamh Smyth for her question and for coming along on my virtual visit to Cavan Institute. I am really looking forward to visiting the facility in person. I fully recognise the need to progress that capital project and I am very eager to work with the Deputy and her Oireachtas colleagues who represent Cavan and Monaghan in order to get that done. Cavan Institute is an example of best practice and I am already telling people about and using examples of what I learned on my visit. I refer to the pre-law…

I will certainly give consideration to the issue of re-establishing the educational disadvantage committee. If the Deputy wishes to communicate with me further on that in writing, I will be happy to look at what she has to say. Most importantly, I want to put money into tackling educational disadvantage and I am very pleased that we now have a ring-fenced fund for mitigating such disadvantage. We have never had this before and need to make it a regular part of the landscape. On SUSI, the Deputy makes a fair point. …

I thank Deputy Connolly for her two very specific questions. With regard to the UL issue, I will honestly have to come back to the Deputy to see whether the HEA has now been made aware, and I thank the Deputy for the reminder on it because I want to know. My logic in my letter to the Deputy in December was that once the HEA had become aware, there was then a route from me to become aware because it is an agency of mine. I will seek an update, and I say this on the record of the House, from the authority as to wheth…

In the context of any governance legislation I bring forward to protect whistleblowers, openness and transparency will always be really important to me. I served on the Committee of Public Accounts. I saw the great lengths whistleblowers had to go to in this country and where they were not always protected and I accept more work is to be done. I am delighted people make protected disclosures but, to be very honest, I am not happy with the level of protected disclosures that people feel compelled to make because the…

I thank the Senator for raising these matters with me and indeed for doing so consistently over recent weeks and months. Certainly, a week has not gone by when we have not engaged on this at least two or three times and I thank him for his commitment. We have a shared desire to rectify a wrong whereby the south east is the only region in our country not to have a university. The lack of that university presence has had real impact on foreign direct investment and the ability to access in the region every part of th…

What the Senator has suggested sounds entirely logical to me. This decision, obviously, will be made by the TU governing authority but as I have said clearly, the speculation around Kilkenny is baseless and idle. It is misinformed, unhelpful and potentially divisive at a crucial moment for this project. There have been many false dawns for this university in the south east. I am refusing to allow us to be sidetracked. The first part of the process has to be to get the application in, appoint the independent panel a…

I thank the Senator for giving me the opportunity to address the Seanad today, and also for her comments on this matter a number of months ago. They did have an impact and I acknowledge her leadership in recognising this untapped potential. There has been too much of the public sector talking the talk and expecting the private sector to walk the walk. We need to step up here. Apprenticeships are a hugely valuable route to both skills development and supporting economic recovery. There is much low-hanging fruit in o…

I hope the Senator and I have many chances to engage. She made a point about how we attract young people, be they male, female or even not-so-young individuals. One of the projects I am working relates to reform of the Central Applications Office. In this country, we narrow the discussion about the full range of options far too early. In my home town, the conversation is often whether someone is going to UCD or Trinity College rather than about what the person actually wants to do and how we can help him or her to …

With the agreement of the House, I will share my time with the Minister of State, Deputy Niall Collins. I welcome the opportunity to update the House on the impact of Covid-19 on the further and higher education sector. I was a little disappointed that, for the first time in my political career, some Members of the Dáil actually voted not to have me here today for questions and answers. I find that a little bit regrettable, as almost half a million people in this country are in further or higher education. Many of …

I thank Deputy Conway-Walsh for her time and her work ethic; she has been here for a significant length of time and I am sorry that more Members have not joined us with regard to this higher education discussion. I am not the Minister for Education and I will not go back on that but the questions asked by the Deputy in respect of my own brief are fair and I am more than happy to answer them. I doubt the Deputy meant it like this, but she commented that Ministers should not hide behind partners in education. When th…

I thank the Deputy. I will do my best to get through as many of his questions as possible. I could not agree more with his point about well-being and that the leaving certificate class of 2020 and the first-year college class of 2021 are like no other in terms of all they have been through. I said in my opening statement that I am establishing a new group to monitor well-being and I have asked the USI to chair that group. We will work out further details of this tomorrow. While I am satisfied that we have done a lo…

I thank the Deputy for his work in advocating the establishment of my Department. I acknowledge the significant work he put into the policy development side of it. I hope we are beginning to see the merits and benefits of the Department. I thank him also for his kind words in regard to the researchers and the work my Department and the HEA are doing in that regard. When we get to the review of the national development plan and, indeed, when we are talking about every capital plan in this country, we need to realise…

My thanks to the Deputy. I assure him that I am following up on the point he made about bursaries in Cork in this significant year for Cork. The Deputy asked about well-being. In addition to the helpline referenced by him, we have increased mental health funding by €3 million. I appreciate his support in that regard. We have also doubled the student assistance fund. There is usually €8 million in that fund and now there is €16 million. Sometimes well-being can be tied to economic well-being. As I said earlier in my…

I know we are almost out of time. I will write to the Deputy. The short answer is that I will contact NUI Galway. Autonomy cannot be used as a fig leaf for inflexibility. I take the point she makes. In the interest of time, I will write back to her on the remaining matters.

I always appreciate people helping to advocate investment in higher education, and yes, I will. Last year saw the largest ever increase in the number of higher education places in our country. Many Deputies opposite were rightly concerned, as was I, that that would be a one-year-only investment. We have managed to ensure that all the extra places we put into the third level system last year will be available again this year, with 2,000 additional places on top of that. We are expanding and growing the higher educat…

I thank Deputy Lahart. I read the speech the Taoiseach gave to the Irish Universities Association, IUA. We have joked about how it must be peculiar for a Fine Gael Minister to have read and now praised a then Leader of the Opposition’s speech, but it is a very fine speech. While Deputy Lahart rightly refers to the tremendously positive contribution that the late Seán Lemass made to this country, what most struck me from that speech was the contribution of Paddy Hillery. The Taoiseach referred in that speech to not …