Brendan Smith: Landmark all‑Ireland university partnership

Thank you very much Cathaoirleach. Minister, you would have heard me many times in this House and at committees and also within the Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Party advocate for closer collaboration in the delivery of education on an all-Ireland basis. I think there's fantastic potential there, particularly in the further and higher education sectors, and I particularly warmly welcome your initiative along with Dundalk Institute of Technology and Queen's University in developing a new partnership which would enable Dundalk Institute to become a university college of Queen's. That's a great all-Ireland development that is a landmark decision and is of particular value for the entire North East region and indeed much further afield. Thank you Cathaoirleach. Thank you very much Deputy Smith and thank you for your constant engagement on this matter. I know it's one that's very dear to you and I know through your chairmanship of the British Irish Parliamentary Association also that you're advancing ties between our jurisdictions all the time and looking to extend cross-border and all-Ireland relationships, which is very much an ambition that I share also. My department has engaged in extensive collaboration with the Northern Ireland Executive and agencies to enhance further and higher education across the island of Ireland, and in April, as you're aware, I secured approval from Cabinet to enable Dundalk Institute to join with Queen's University to enter into a new strategic partnership. The first ever all-Ireland university is a really exciting project and I'm advancing that legislation. At the moment, drafting is underway. I want to thank the committee for their work on the pre-legislative scrutiny and engaging with it so proactively. It is a landmark initiative, it's a landmark project, which I think is really fundamental to our shared all-Ireland missions. It will also enhance research and innovation in the North East on the Dublin-Belfast corridor and provide new opportunities for students and for employers. More broadly, my department continues to work with the Department of Health to expand cross-border healthcare training, including an agreement with Queen's Belfast to support 50 Irish-funded undergraduate medical places across the last two years' intakes. And of course, we have the Creating Our Futures document, which is the new Further Education and Training Strategy, and that includes commitments. That's one we published about a month ago. That's a new FET strategy, which looks to strengthen all-Ireland collaboration with the normal joint initiatives between ETVs and FET schools here, with their equivalent across Northern Ireland. And I worked recently with Minister Graeme Archibald, the Northern Ireland Minister for the Economy, to launch the first ever all-Ireland apprenticeship. It was in the area of accounting technicians. We met as part of the Government Summit in Framley at the time and we launched that initiative, having worked together on it for several months beforehand. And we have a number of other initiatives looking at the same line. And then, of course, most departments have scored £50 million through Peace Plus for Skills Development also, which we'll continue to throw out. We have five new all-Ireland projects being delivered and there is much more we can do on that. Thank you, Councillor Cormann. I thank the Minister for his reply. Minister, I must say that members of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly across all jurisdictions were very strong in their praise of your contribution at our plenary meeting in Surrey, where you spoke about the opportunities there are for all-Ireland developments, and also East-West developments as well. Minister, at a recent meeting of the Further and Higher Education Committee, with the leadership of Queen's University and the leadership of Dundalk IT, they are very anxious to drive this partnership forward in a very positive manner. They very much appreciate the leadership you have shown in that. One of the great messages that came out of that particular meeting was the willingness of both Queen's and Dundalk to work along with the further education colleges. They have already partnership with colleges where people can commence a course in a college of further education and go on then and complete a degree course in either Dundalk or in Queen's. They're very anxious to even intensify that collaboration between those higher education institutes and the further education colleges across Cavanagh and Monaghan, and in our neighbouring counties north of the border as well. Just to mention as well, one project which I didn't mention in my initial response was the Digital Creative Industries Programme, which is a 10 million project, an all-Ireland project, supported by Shared Ireland Capital as well, which will enhance collaboration on the creative industries and the digital industries, people like scrap design, movies, the arts, digital arts across border restrictions, which is a project that's now live and which is one of the Shared Ireland projects within my department. Just to talk to the the ETBs and the options for further education and training to work on across border bases also, so my department is working with SOTUS in developing a detailed implementation plan on the new Creative Futures FET strategy, and one of those actions is to advance all-Ireland collaboration through specific all-Ireland linkages and partnerships to strengthen engagement, education, training, enterprise and industry stakeholders in Northern Ireland, and we have of course the Queen's DKT partnership, and there's a number of ancillary projects now coming into being under that, which I look forward to supporting strongly as they come through, and in fact I'm inviting proposals on that, and I know that you work closely with ETBs in Tavern Monaghan and elsewhere, and if there are projects you want to bring to my attention, I'd welcome that input as well. Thank you, I'd ask Ken Corder, I thank the Minister for his reply. Minister, as you're aware, we're very anxious to progress the Tavern College of the future, and I sincerely hope that there will be further developments on that over the summer months. We're anxious to have that new major extension to the existing college constructed on the Cathedral Road right in the centre of Tavern Town, where there is a demand for new accommodation, and you saw it first-hand yourself Minister, the work that goes on at that particular institute, it draws students from a wide area, it has a huge success rate in students fulfilling career choices, also following careers chosen before they went into college, and also going on to attain further higher education attainments as well. So it's very important that we move that project along as quickly as possible, the accommodation is needed, and you can be assured that the people, the director of the college and his staff would ensure that the students attending there would get the very best options across all courses, and the best in learning and teaching as well. Minister? Yes, thank you very much Deputy, and thank you for your invitation to visit that day along with Minister Niamh Smith, and indeed we had a very good engagement in Tavern, and a visit at the institute, and I absolutely share your desire to see that College of the future advance at pace, and I hope to have a positive announcement of that in the near future, which I'll certainly be keeping members appraised of, because of my intention that they would be able to appoint a design team in the coming months, and that would enable them to progress on with that project. That's much needed, I could see myself that day visiting the site, visiting learners, speaking to educators, and traversing the school, and that's already there, and that they're doing great work, and really can only enhance that with the provision of a capital project in terms of that further training centre, which I hope to be able to support strongly in the coming months. So that is a very important project that I will continue to work towards more broadly in terms of the Shared Island Initiative. There are other projects that are falling under the ambition of the Queen's DKIT partnership, which I intend to support also, and to further advance the collaboration on Northside bases, and as I mentioned already, we have launched the first all-island apprenticeship, the accountancy technician one very recently, and there are a couple of others that are being considered, and where possible I would intend to roll that out.