Results 681-700 of 1,067,802 for in 'Dáil debates' OR (speaker:Eoin Ó Broin OR speaker:Imelda Munster OR speaker:Réada Cronin OR speaker:Richard Bruton OR speaker:Paul Donnelly OR speaker:Duncan Smith OR speaker:Malcolm Noonan OR speaker:Richard Bruton8 OR speaker:Sorca Clarke OR speaker:Hildegarde Naughton OR speaker:Peter Fitzpatrick OR speaker:Aodhán Ó Ríordáin OR speaker:Patrick O'Donovan OR speaker:Pádraig Mac Lochlainn OR speaker:Rose Conway-Walsh OR speaker:Barry Cowen) in 'Committee meetings'

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, I am not going to borrow a phrase from any former Taoiseach or anything like that. I will lay out what we have done. We have gone over halfway across the river and we have, with the opening up of the-----

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: My late mother had an expression, "Did you ever hear what happened 'thought'?", and I am sure in Ahascragh the Senator knows 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: With regard to the universities, to be fair, everybody accepted that no one expected under any budget, even one Deputy Farrell might introduce, €307 million to be provided in one step. It would have meant nothing for apprenticeships, skills or FET, so-----

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.