Rose Conway-Walsh Questions Cuts, Seeks Clarity on 4,130 Places

Thank you, Cathaoirleach, and thank you, Minister, and I certainly share you commending students for the huge work that they have done this year and for everything they have done in terms of keeping things safe and working with other students as well to support them. Just a couple of questions. In terms of the general grant to the Institutes of Technology and to the universities, is it right that that has been cut by 9% going on the figures that we have up here? Then the other question I just want to ask you is in relation to the CAO places and the pressure on the leave insert, are you satisfied that this budget will be able to do enough to bring additional places into third level to ease the pressure on the CAO system? And how many additional places would be added for undergraduate students coming through the CAO system in 2021? And how many of these will be over and above the projected number to meet the demographic demands? And just as finally, Minister, specifically in relation to graduate entry medical students, excluding the places for the international students, the graduate entry medical students and places already allocated to those who sat the leave insert in November last year, how many medical places will be available to the class of 2021? And how will this compare to the class of 2020? How many have already been allocated in terms of medical places? How many have already been allocated to students who sat their leave insert in November of last year? Thank you. Thanks very much to Deputy Conway Walsh. So to try and take the questions in sequence, when you actually look at the year-on-year movement for higher education is skewed due to the temporary COVID funding in 2020. So of the total 216 million allocated to this department for COVID in 2020, 202 million of that was allocated to higher education. So removing COVID from the 2020 and the 2021 figures, the higher education, the Programme B, has actually increased year-on-year by 161 million. And this is driven by measures in budget 2021. So university and institute of technology grants, which is subhead B4, which I think you're referring to, had 156 million in temporary COVID support in 2020. And this skews the figure when comparing year-on-year. When you exclude that temporary funding, the real movement year-on-year in B4 is an increase of 6% or 58 million euro. And that's driven by additional funding at budget 2021 for pay deals, for research and for additional calculated grade places. Obviously the government has, as you know, held centrally COVID money for this year, of which my department is expecting to receive an allocation in the coming weeks as well, as we work through the impact of COVID. So actually year-on-year, like for like, the level of funding under the general current grants B4 subhead is up 6%, but that 9%, that's the reason why that is skewed. In relation to, is that okay? In relation to the, in relation to the places, I'm sorry, I hope I got all the questions, but if not, come back to me. So as of now, standing still based on the budget allocation, we have funding to provide 4,130 additional higher education places this September compared to last year. And that's based with two figures, 2,700 of those places based on demographic projections and the remainder based on what they call the Human Capital Initiative. So today we have the funding in place for just over 4,000 additional places. I think the question you're posing to me or the challenge that's been put to me is, can we do more above and beyond that? And I believe we can. I've set up a working group in the department to work with the CAO, with the universities, with the institutes and to report back to me just after Easter. At which case I intend to then go to Cabinet in the month of April to say what more we will be able to do subject to the government making funding available. There are some constraints, mainly around the issue of placements. It's important, obviously, for a lot of areas, for any extra place we create, we also have to have a matching placement. So we'll also be linking with, for example, the Department of Health in terms of nursing places, medical places and the likes, but also the Department of Education in relation to teaching places. So in terms of a specific answer on the medical places and a specific answer on how many additional places above and beyond the 4,000, you'll have clarity on that next month and I'll be very happy to come back to the committee with a detailed note or indeed engage with the committee. Okay.