Brendan Smith praises regional colleges and INSPIRE research funding

Minister, as the title of your department demonstrates, it has a very broad remit. Of course, education, research, innovation, they are the key elements in the bedrock of any economy. Very important, Minister, I very much welcome the fact that you are supporting further and higher education throughout the regions, and indeed when the late President Patrick Paddy Hillary, who as a member of the Fianna Fáil Government in the 1960s laid out the vision and strategy for the development of the region of technical colleges, it was always on the basis of bringing education to the regions and ensuring that the regions would derive benefits and drive on their economy to eliminate the disparity at national level in economic development that existed at that time. Thank you, Deputy Minister. Yes, thank you very much, Deputy, and I want to thank you also for the invitation to Cavan recently, and I was delighted to be able to take that up. We visited, of course, the Cavan Institute where we saw, amongst other things, the OEM apprentices that work on the manufacturing side, advanced manufacturing. We also saw the students at YouthReach, very critical intervention with youth, and from there I went to Monaghan Institute, and then I finished the day in ATU in Letterkenny where we launched the new vet school. And that, just as a snapshot of a day visiting key sites, shows just in the North West alone the activity and investment that's going on right through from YouthReach to intervention with the disadvantaged learners, and we've given those an opportunity to succeed right through to the new professionals being created through the vet school up in ATU. So I think it very much is a snapshot of the opportunity that's available through education. And of course our future prosperity depends on our ability to compete globally and lead out as a small advanced knowledge economy, and we are a knowledge and skills economy. People are our greatest natural asset. I see my job as Minister in this brief to unlock that potential because they have it. The people have the talent. They have the skills. And knowledge. We just need to impart it, to nurture it, and allow them to reach that full potential. And that is key to our economic success, particularly in a changing world with trade and tariffs and a number of unknowns. What we do control and what we do have as a known is our people and our talent and being able to, as I nurtured that. Just last week I launched the INSPIRE programme, a €750 million commitment to research and innovation funding in the state, unprecedented in recent years, but a successful programme to the PRTLI programme, which was so successful in the start of the century in driving on our economic position as well. And Debbie Smith, I want to acknowledge that you were a member of the government in 2010 who committed to the PRTLI programme at a time when economic conditions were difficult to say the least, and the wolf was at the door. That government had the foresight and the belief to commit to that again. Unfortunately, after that point it lay fall out for some years until I came into office and it has now been relaunched with a €750 million fund to drive on again our economic prosperity and research and innovation commitment. Thank you Mr Deputy. Minister, very much. I was very glad that you were able to accept my invitation to attend CAVAN and see it first hand, meeting the students, meeting the staff, meeting the Board of Management, the vibrancy that there is to the CAVAN Institute and also to CAVAN Youth Reach. And oftentimes youth reach doesn't get the attention that it deserves. And I see in CAVAN and in Monaghan, it's a pathway to further education and indeed on to higher education as well. I was delighted that day in CAVAN you were able to state very, very clearly that you are very anxious to advance the proposal to provide major additional permanent accommodation at the Institute's existing campus at Cathedral Road CAVAN. CAVAN. I have a particular affinity with CAVAN Institute. I was involved from the beginning with its establishment and I was the chairman, the chair of the first Board of Management and I have seen it go on from strength to strength and at all times the college and the institute has worked in partnership with local enterprise, in partnership with the local community and it's that working together. And again on the all Ireland basis I want to see as you have heard me say before Minister, more cooperation in an all Ireland cross-border basis in relation to the provision of further education as well. Thank you Deputy Minister. Thank you very much Deputy and absolutely and that opportunity that CAVAN provides was very evident on the day of my visit and I think that there is a great opportunity to continue to expand education and provision there on site at the CAVAN Institute and that I think would be encompassed to the College of the Future Programme which I am working at through the National Development Plan and I am examining the progress of that at the moment but I would be confident that that would be one of the projects I think that would do well from that fund. On the all Ireland dimension I was pleased to be able to announce the collaboration between Queen's University and Oondark IT very recently and I have spoken to both colleges a number of times in relation to this and I am very keen that we advance that expeditiously and there is an ambitious programme shared by both colleges. I think it is fair to say the reaction to that for us all Ireland University has been extremely positive and extremely strong right across the board and I think that all Ireland dimension to our education and to our skills economy is so important not to mention to our own national. Thank you Minister. Thank you very much Deputy. Minister I was absolutely delighted at the further and higher education committee a number of weeks ago when you were able to tell us about the progress that had been made in developing the strategic partnership between Dundalk Institute and Queen's and you were able to say the award we will have an all Ireland University. Those of us from the borough region in particular who have advocated for those developments are absolutely thrilled that practical things have been done. We are not talking about waving flags and talking about citizens' assemblies with Minister Lourdes going and doing practical things. Minister I would have mentioned to you that in the past a former President of Dundalk Institute, Dr Michael Mulvey along with the then Chair of the Board of Governors, Councillor Clifford Kelly, had put the idea forward of more collaboration with the Northern Ireland education institutions and they had particularly identified Queen's as a very worthwhile potential partner for Dundalk IT. I am absolutely delighted that the vision that those people had outlined, they had done some preparatory work as well and I know that as a former member of the Board of Governors in Dundalk as well, our Oireachtas colleague, Senator German Wilson, was very supportive of the work of Councillor Clifford Kelly and Michael Mulvey when they were advocating for that All-Ireland cross-border cooperation when it was not as fashionable as it is today. Thank you. Minister. Well, All-Ireland entities are always fashionable in my household but perhaps not across every, every, they perhaps weren't advancing and I think you are right Deputy that it is, look, we can do all the citizens assemblies and deliberations we want but doing it for real I think is what counts and I think that's what we're doing here in this and I said there is a very ambitious timetable to make that collaboration come together. I intend to bring legislation through the Houses in the new year to set out the mechanics of how we've been enabled and I suppose it is important that Dundalk IT will enjoy, continue to enjoy a strong autonomy as part of the HEA landscape but by whilst being a fully fledged university institute and a college of Queen's University with all the powers to award degrees conferred by Queen's as part of that and I think both entities that would benefit Queen's will also benefit significantly from the collaboration and either specialties and disciplines and knowledge in each that they can share and pool and be benefited from and I always think the New Yorker, Curl and Cayla were stronger together and that's evident in this all our collaboration. Thank you Minister