Brendan Smith: Parity for LTIs and Cavan Institute progress

Like you and other members, I welcome the Minister and his officials to the committee and I thank you for your regular engagement with us as a committee. First of all, I want to congratulate you and your department on securing a very, very substantial allocation of the National Development Plan. Were it not for that funding, which underpins all of the work of the department, we wouldn't be talking about the progress that you're making and the plans you have, other than having that funding in place. Minister, you referred in your presentation to the 1,100 places in expansion in health, disability and therapy training places. I think I mentioned it to your officials before, if not to yourself, the potential to use the further education sector to train people in therapies and also in home care provision as well. I know in my own town, in Cavan, Cavan Institute has an arrangement with HSE at local level and with private nursing home providers in regard to training home care assistants, home care workers. As we know from our daily work as public representatives, there's a huge demand for home care workers at the minute. So if that can be expanded and given some momentum, I think it would be very beneficial for the health care provision overall. You also mentioned, Minister, the INSPIRE programme and the huge emphasis you have quite rightly put, as previous governments did come back to the late 1990s as well, in funding adequately research and development and all of that innovation. Minister, you mentioned about Tyndall Institute being there with Antaisha last week and the whole area of semiconductors and that. It's not your area of particular responsibility, when you think of semiconductors, the geopolitical situation that has emerged over recent years as well. We as a country are very shy to have official relations with Taiwan. We have a lot to learn from that country. I don't expect you to make a comment, Minister, but at government level, we don't have the level of cooperation or recognition that other member states of the European Union have with Taiwan and we should be at least having a presence at official level in Taiwan because they're a very powerful country in the whole area of IT, as you know. Our colleague Senator Paul Daly outlined very strongly and accurately the need to address the lack of proper pay and conditions for staff in the local training initiatives. They made an excellent presentation here last week. I'm very familiar with the one in my own county and I have known that they have provided very, very important support to people who hadn't gone to second chance education, who had maybe mental health issues, who lacked confidence, and we all know as public representatives, oftentimes we have a person to participate in a rural social scheme, a community employment scheme. It was the first time they got a boost to go into education sector, go into training, go into employment and literally made new people of those people. It was the first real start in life that they got in training or in the labour force. So Minister, you quite rightly pointed out the need for rationalisation or consolidation that's mentioned in your tertiary education strategy, and you mentioned as well that consolidation does not mean a such rationalisation doing it with particular agencies. You mentioned quite rightly that it's about parity. Well, the one group that needs parity with their counterparts are the local training initiative people. I know excellent work is done by the youth reach in my own constituency and elsewhere by community training centres that Deputy Cummins has often spoken to us about here. But the local training initiative, apart from they have traditionally dealt with an older age cohort that go to youth reach. That's my opinion and that's known some of the people who have graduated through those programmes. So Minister, I don't expect you to have an answer today, but I sincerely hope that your department officials have the opportunity to read the transcript of last week's committee meeting and really address this issue. It's a small cohort of people, but they're providing a powerful service for people who need it. Also as well, Minister, the further education capital budget, it's a good budget and I know that you are anxious to move that on. You know of my own particular interest in the proposed major building project for Cavern Institute, that we consolidate the institute on one site in Cavern Town. You mentioned to us that Grange Garden Development Agency will be the project promoters, if that's the proper word, that you might need to give to enact some legislative or regulatory changes. Will it be possible to move that on? And again, I think we want to emphasise the great development and the progress that you have made in ensuring that Dundalk Institute of Technology becomes a constituent college of Queen's University. And with regard again to Senator Daly about the number of years, some courses, I've spoken to many people who have done the post-master's graduate degree in education, formerly known as the HDIP. There was a one-year course. And I've spoken to teachers in my own county and outside it as well, who are mentors in that and said there's no need for two years. Thank you. Thanks, Ciarán. So thank you very much, Deputy, and thank you also for the invitation to Cavern. And we had a very great, solid opportunity to see a lot of the good work that's been done by some of the centres that you mentioned, and indeed the Cavern Institute was great to visit as well. And I very much share your ambition to see that develop into a college in the future at the earliest opportunity, with a real capital expansion there, et cetera. And we do have a – so as for the mechanism to deliver that, we have an intention to enable the Green Government Development Agency to become the delivery mechanism for the colleges of the future. That does require legislation, but it is something that I've asked my officials to work on and work out. And more broadly, I'm engaging with ETBs in the coming weeks to invite the design process to start in a number of locations, which will advance that further. I think that will be a significant step towards realising that ambition as well. And a few other points just to mention, just on the research and development, I thank you for your comments. And I know you're part of the government that prioritised that in a previous government as well, so I want to acknowledge Honourable Taoiseach Cowan at the time. The INSPIRE programme, as well as the Tyndall Institute, which I mentioned, which was a very significant investment in that particular institute, but the more general call is to open in the coming weeks. So that will be the first round call for what we call local institutional infrastructure. So that is for universities to have access to funding for equipment, for labs, for different centres. It will be a significant funding, but my intention is that we'll call it local in the coming weeks, so certainly before the summer. So that would be, I think, very welcome. We've worked the IOA and others on that. I'd take a point on the geopolitical situation and the chips and the semiconductors. So one of the reasons Tyndall is so pivotal to Ireland and to the EU is because two lines under the Chips Act, and part of that is to make sure that Europe has digital and technical sovereignty and intellectual property and the ability to manufacture within Ireland. I'd also mention with the IOC, such as the Intel, has been a very significant generator of microchips, semiconductors, et cetera, and it is absolutely key that we have that resource for the global supply chain and for the digital supply chain within Ireland, and Tyndall gives us more intellectual property towards doing that. I'd take the point about the further education route into the healthcare courses. We actually have a healthcare assistant apprenticeship started, and there's a social care apprenticeship, but I think we can do more. I think we should do more. I think the homecare and larger points on that, I'll ask my team to look at that as well. And just on the LTIs, I fully agree with the good work that they do in terms of their current negotiations. I have instructed the department to offer a 7% pay rise to them, and that is, I think, being considered at the moment, and we'll see where that goes, but I'm very engaged in that, and I do intend, and I've codified it into the tertiary strategy as an objective to ensure that parity is achieved between the LTIs, CDC, and YouthReach, because I think they all do very good work. All do actually quite similar work, but they don't have similar terms and conditions always. I think that it would be desirable, to say the least, that they would actually be all given the similar platform and opportunity and support.