Results 681-700 of 1,068,795 for in 'Dáil debates' OR in 'Committee meetings' (speaker:Declan Breathnach OR speaker:James O'Connor OR speaker:Réada Cronin OR speaker:Richard Bruton OR speaker:Patrick Costello OR speaker:Mick Barry OR speaker:Norma Foley OR speaker:Thomas Byrne OR speaker:Patrick O'Donovan OR speaker:Seán Crowe OR speaker:Ossian Smyth OR speaker:Niall Collins OR speaker:Joe Flaherty OR speaker:Paul Murphy OR speaker:Paul Donnelly OR speaker:Peter Burke OR speaker:Cathal Crowe OR speaker:Christopher O'Sullivan OR speaker:Gary Gannon OR speaker:Michael Creed OR speaker:Heather Humphreys OR speaker:Malcolm Noonan)

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Patrick O'Donovan: No. A reform agenda is something that is open to the Department working through the HEA. We have the Higher Education Authority for a good reason. We have it to advise us with regard to needs. We do not live in some sort of a bunker where we do not discuss anything. For instance, getting back to Deputy O'Callaghan's point with regard to inflated grades, the Government is making...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Patrick O'Donovan: What it has to do with it is that if the Senator looks at what we have done in the most recent announcement I made with regard to veterinary, we did not put it into what some people call a traditional university, which I think is terrible terminology. We decided to go into regional Ireland and into-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Patrick O'Donovan: No, it is not a simple question. It is done on a needs-based analysis and we will look at it based on a needs-based analysis. There is no decision made with regard to that. To decide that we are going to give 30% to this and 70% to that or 50% to this and 50% to that denies something called need. The next Minister for further and higher education, or a subsequent one, will obviously have...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Patrick O'Donovan: To answer the Senator's second question first, no, I do not acknowledge that.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Patrick O'Donovan: In my first answer on this, I said that by 2029 we will have bridged the agreed gap.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Patrick O'Donovan: The Senator is denying the fact that we are already paying in excess of €150 million. It is not just €50 million this year and nothing from last year. This is a cumulative amount of money.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Patrick O'Donovan: I already said to the Senator a while ago that nobody would have anticipated that it would be €307 million in one year.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Patrick O'Donovan: Everybody accepted that there was a trajectory to get to €307 million, and we have gone-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Patrick O'Donovan: I will tell the Senator when he is going to have it. I have a pathway thanks for the National Training Fund. It is the only Department with a multi-annual funding framework that can give certainty.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Patrick O'Donovan: I am glad the Senator said that is welcome because he has not said before now.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Patrick O'Donovan: By the way-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Patrick O'Donovan: Just on that, Chair-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Patrick O'Donovan: -----we are not closing the universities by the way.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Patrick O'Donovan: I have a lot of engagement with the IUA. I know that nobody expected €307 million in one year. It was always going to be on an agreed incremental basis. We now have a date, 2029, by which time that figure will be arrived at.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Patrick O'Donovan: The Senator is denying the fact that there are hundreds of millions of euro in existing commitments from the Department already going into universities. This is to increase the funding. To suggest that it is somehow ground zero is not a fair representation, as I think even the Senator would agree.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Patrick O'Donovan: The only commitment that has ever been made with regard to a timeframe around when the gap will finally be closed is in this budget because it was the only basis on which there was a multi-annual funding model on which to base it. Up to then, it was on the basis of going in and trying to fight for each individual budget. That is now no longer the case and the universities are very happy...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Patrick O'Donovan: Do not provoke him.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Patrick O'Donovan: I have often attended committee meetings with the Department of Finance or the respective line Departments over Estimates. There will be a Supplementary Estimate – there always is – and the Department is in discussions with the Departments of public expenditure and reform and Finance.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Patrick O'Donovan: I was at University College Cork recently where this matter was raised with me. I was told that some of the apparatuses that I had trained on 30 years ago when I studied chemistry had not changed a whole pile, but the world has changed a great deal. Many of our universities have relied on foundations, philanthropy and industry. We acknowledge that. It is not where we would like to be, but...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Patrick O'Donovan: It does, but I wanted to refer to the sciences.