Brendan Smith welcomes progress on Cavan Institute campus

I very much welcome the emphasis that has been placed on the development of the further education sector since the Government took office in June 2020. I spoke to the Minister's predecessors on many occasions about the opportunities that exist to develop the further education sector on an all-Ireland basis. I am particularly glad that there is a substantial capital programme. One of the projects of particular interest to me is the proposed development of the state-of-the-art campus in Cavan to provide additional permanent accommodation at the Cavan Institute. I would be grateful that the Minister could give me an outline of the progress he expects to make with his capital funding this year. Minister? Thank you, Deputy. I know your continued interest in the Cavan project as well as others, but I suppose more generally first, in terms of the Department's capital ceiling for the last period, there was a dedicated capital envelope, as you have referred to, Deputy, announcing that amounted to £300 million for the further education training sector, for the FET sector as we often refer to it, and available funding has increased again by £6 million, actually increased from a low base of £6 million in 2018 to £107 million in the current year. So that is a very significant multiplier of the available funding for the FET colleges and the FET system. So funding for the FET capital projects is distributed through SOLUS under a number of different funding streams, and there are 70 small to medium-scale projects being progressed at the moment, everything from minor capital works, emergency health and safety, and then the Strategic Infrastructure Upgrade Fund, as well as devolved funding directly from my own department for minor capital works. And just looking to the Cavan Monaghan project, which I know is of interest to the Deputy, so the proposal, there is a proposal to build centralised accommodation on land owned, currently occupied by Cavan Institute at Cathedral Road in the town, and then that building will have modern learning spaces, specialised areas in our social and recreation spaces also, and surrounded by open spaces to create a vibrant campus community, and it will include a complete range of support services, including guidance and counselling, and we heard earlier in the debate today about how important counselling is to ensure students make the right choices at the right times, as well as quiet spaces and informal learning spaces. So that project received approval in October of last year, October 2024, it passed through approval gate one of the infrastructure guidelines, and has progressed now to the next stage, which is pre-tender, as a project design planning and procurement strategy stage, and Solis are currently working with Cavan Monaghan ETB to progress this through the next stage, and now that the Deputy is flagged as an area of interest, I certainly keep a close eye on it, and update the Deputy as it progresses along, but it is going well, I suppose, put simply Deputy, it is going well, it has passed the first test, it is now to the next stage, that pre-tender stage, and Solis on behalf of myself and the Department are working actively with ETB to progress it, so we will certainly make sure that it moves quickly along. Thank you Minister, Deputy Smith. Thank you. I very warmly welcome the Minister's confirmation of the progress being made with this very important project for our constituency, as the Cahirluk knows. I hope Minister you will be in a position to visit Cavan Institute at an early date, and also to visit Monaghan Institute as well. Cavan has been a very successful Institute since its establishment, I was very much involved with the Cavan Institute from its early days, I was the first Chair of the Board of Management of the College, and I was also very much involved in getting the original building at Cathedral Road, which is now not adequate due to the increased enrolments over the years. Cavan Institute was actually the first dedicated post-leaving certificate college in the country, so it was, and it has developed collaborations with colleges north of the border as well, which I believe is very important. As the Minister outlined in his reply, the College, the Institute needs additional permanent accommodation, and I am very glad that there will be such a range of classroom and other ancillary accommodation, plus sports facilities as well. Minister, I hope that Solis will be able to drive forward this capital programme as urgently as possible, and I am delighted that you have secured from the Department of Public Expenditure even additional funding to boast of the capital budget, and I know with the work of Cavan on the ETB, as Cahirluk will know, that funding will be put to very good use. Thank you Deputy. Minister. Thank you Deputy. I know it will be put to very good use, and I think it is a fantastic project, I think it is a very exciting project, and great to hear actually the traditional history of that building, and indeed of the project, and further education in the Cavan Monaghan area, and thank you for the invitation to visit. I will certainly put that on my diary, and we will get that there in due course, because I do like to see for myself, that can't be it actually seen for real, and meeting the teams on the ground to understand how the projects are coming on, so I want to thank you for your interest in it Deputy, and indeed in the original site, and I think you were involved at the outset as well with it, so I will certainly keep a close eye on that, and indeed get to it in your course as well. Thank you Deputy. Thank you very much Minister, and I think it is very important that we record the importance of the further education sector. It was originally established to respond to the needs of the local community, to respond to the needs of the local economy as well, and it has been an extremely important gateway for students to get a pathway to higher education, and it has given so many people the opportunity, who traditionally would not have had the opportunity to get an education beyond post-primary. So Minister, it has been extremely important in ensuring that more and more people who may have come from homes where there was not particular heavy emphasis on education, that they have seen that pathway to further education, to successful careers, and I very much welcome the emphasis that the previous government, this government are in this sector, and I have no doubt you and Minister Harkin, will lead the sector very well, and Minister again, I would emphasise, and as we represent, as Deputy, and myself represent two border counties, we are always very conscious of our neighbours in Fermanagh to Roan and Armagh, and the potential there is there for further and more intense collaboration on a cross-border basis. Thank you. Minister. Yeah, thank you Deputy, just again to agree with you, and thank you for those points on the area of student access to the system, and those that may be not coming from backgrounds for traditional education or higher education was a feature. I think the further education sector has been so progressive, and has led so much in that regard, and making education accessible to so many more families in a community setting, closer to home, easier to access from economic reasons, from family reasons, for care reasons, and also that that welcome and embrace, and there's a very exciting new development to the tertiary degrees, which you probably are aware of, Deputy, where, and I met many tertiary degree students recently at an event in Grains-Gorman, but from around the country, and the option is there for students to start their training, our educational journey, in a further education college, in a local area, closer to home, makes it easier on many fronts, but then progressed actually one or two years in the further education college, to a more traditional higher education institution, and go on to a degree level accreditation, so that's a wonderful journey, and there's many more opportunities. Myself and Minister Harkness visited yesterday, I met Lucas and Offaly at the National Skills and Construction area, and the careers in construction that are opening up are huge, and very exciting new journeys as well. Thank you Minister.