Results 121-140 of 10,136 for speaker:Patrick O'Donovan

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 would call it an organic process of engagement. Since the technological universities were established, we are cognisant we want to invest a significant amount of capital in them, which we have done, continue to do and will do in the near future. The mechanism to do it will not be arrived at by our Department in isolation. A number of Departments and entities will have a say in 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: It can be recovered.

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: They will be notified and it will automatically come back.

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: Immediately. It is a provision for next 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: It is automatic.

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: HEIs are autonomous organisations and come before the public accounts committee having had their accounts reviewed by the Comptroller and Auditor General. I have already told my officials and relayed to the Higher Education Authority that a number of these are running through. They are independent of the Department. There will be an opportunity for the Higher Education Authority to, for...

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: One of the things it does is allow us to do what we are doing and what we are seeing at the moment. In the absence of the HEA Act, we would not have had a section 64 process in any higher education institutes. On that basis alone, it is a huge improvement. We have to have regard, as a Government, to the fact that while most of the HEIs derive the lion's share of their funding from 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: I heard my colleague, the Minister for Education, on the radio this morning talking to Claire Byrne about this. She laid out in easy to understand terms why grade inflation was introduced. She said the introduction of a cliff edge now would be equally difficult for students to bear for a variety of reasons. I support her in that but I also support her in the concept of moving away from...

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 gave legislative effect to Research Ireland and it was commenced on 1 August. Celine Fitzgerald has been appointed CEO on an interim basis and Michael Horgan is the chairman. It was not without its difficulties. I think everybody acknowledges that. However, the most important thing is that in the passage of the legislation through the Oireachtas, TDs and Senators were anxious to point...

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 have a date but can revert in due course. It is something we are anxious to do. We have to have a process but it will be during the calendar year 2025, there or thereabouts.

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 thank the Senator for his question. I am sure he will have read the responses of the universities. This was one of the things they welcomed. They welcomed the fact, over the last two budgets, we provided €105 million to bridge the gap. We are providing another €50-odd million this year, bringing the figure to around €150 million. We will provide €50 million...

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 acknowledges 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: We are not failing.

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.

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 take the Senator's last point first, as the Senator will appreciate, I will not negotiate a supplementary budget live on television. I am sure the Minister for public expenditure and reform would not appreciate it. I do not accept the premise that it is a failure. I do not think the Irish Universities Association or the representative of the technological universities-----

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...