Results 741-760 of 1,072,714 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 OR speaker:Neasa Hourigan) 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: The Senator should withdraw that comment.

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 the first instance, we got a sum of money to activate the student accommodation system for 2025. This is in addition to the student accommodation allocation the former Minister, and now Taoiseach, got previously through the national development plan and the windfall. It is up to the universities to subscribe to and ascribe the thresholds in those instances. They will know what a 30%...

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: As the Deputy will know as a constituency TD, the type of students we are targeting are those who will have come through the SUSI system, people who are socioeconomically disadvantaged. They will obviously have met a set of criteria already to qualify for a grant. We have changed the thresholds this year to make sure we keep the people in it who are already in it and do not have people...

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: Yes.

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 be fair to career guidance teachers, I think we are changing it. If anyone had the opportunity to attend the WorldSkills Ireland event held in the RDS recently, they will have seen that the place was chock-a-block with students from all over the country, led predominantly by their career guidance teachers. However, we still have a job of work to do. Recently I met a group of young...

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 agree with the Deputy. The people we are trying to convince do not watch Oireachtas TV. They are on TikTok and Instagram. Thankfully, we have good, young influencers, such as Building Heroes, who have a massive following on Instagram and are encouraging young women to go into apprenticeships and the crafts. We need more of that because not only are influencers telling people about 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: Are we happy? Of course we are not happy when we see the deliberations in the Committee of Public Accounts with Accounting Officers - in this case presidents of universities - and the stuff we are all confronted with as Members of the Oireachtas. Ultimately, the Oireachtas votes the money to our Department and then our Department delegates it to the Higher Education Authority. It then...

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 concerns me because if there were a drop off in any philanthropic source, the spotlight will come back on our Department in the context of trying to fill the gap. That is not a space we want to be in. We want universities to have foundations and we also want them to be out beating the bushes internationally to get money to make sure that the next generation of young learners is properly...

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: Some of the stuff has been more than disappointing; it has been outrageous. We cannot have that going on. We cannot have that going forward. There has been a culture change in the higher education institutions, which is welcomed by virtue of what we have seen in this room and others in this precinct. That is a good thing. It is good the institutions are held to account. However, I also...

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: As I said in reply to a previous contributor, it is a body of work that we are undertaking as a Department in conjunction with the Department of public expenditure and reform and other agencies, including Eurostat. It will have obvious implications. One of the most important things we will do in the short and medium term is to build capacity in our universities, especially our technological...

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 level of funding to the technological universities from 2012 to last week, when the budget passed, amounted to just less than €300 million. The Chairman will agree that is not an insignificant 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: That is a substantial amount of money. It is divided up via the landscape fund, the technological universities transformation fund, the sector advancement fund, the research and innovation fund and the transformation for resilience and recovery fund. A lot of work is being done with the technological universities and others with regard to accommodation. The feasibility study report is...

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 important thing to point out is that the awarding of the two veterinary colleges, which has been long talked about, was made as a result of a recommendation of the Higher Education Authority. The Department has resourced and funded to allow the Higher Education Authority, HEA, to make that by virtue of the amount of money we give it. It goes to a number of different elements 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: As much as I would like to be tuned into the Cathaoirleach's local radio station on a daily basis, he might forgive me for not listening to it.

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 sure the Cathaoirleach has a clip that he will send to me, and I will certainly listen to it.

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: Is the Cathaoirleach suggesting I might not be around? Wexford County Council is progressing the acquisition of the preferred site by way of a compulsory purchase order. The HEA recently received the business case from SETU outlining the proposed infrastructure, which will require evaluation. Once that is done, we will see-----

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 do not want to put a timeframe on it, because the HEA prides itself on being independent. In fairness, it has turned around everything fairly quickly and I imagine it will do the same thing here.

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: On that, to be helpful, I do not have it to hand but will send it to the Senator. The answer is a HEA matter but we will get the answer.

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 before the vote, one of the things I wrote down was that the Senator did not want academic freedoms to be threatened and I entirely agree with that. I also do not want any individual, member of an academic staff or a student in any university or HEI to feel threatened by who they are for whatever reason. In my understanding, that is what the whole concept of this framework is, given...

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 relation to this aspect, I am sure that if we had an academic perpetrating antisemitic, anti-Catholic, anti-Islamic or Islamophobic ideas within the confines of a higher education institute, we would want to have a charter, a set of rules and a set of principles to ensure that person was not allowed to promulgate that sort of hate.