Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 20 June 2023
743. Deputy Fergus O'Dowd asked the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science his plans to develop and support further and higher education in County Louth; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [29672/23]
View answerLouth Meath Education and Training Board (LMETB) provides a broad range of further education and training (FET) options in County Louth as set out in the attached table which provides an overview of the planned FET provision to over 18,700 beneficiaries in the county in 2023.
FET provision in County Louth, as across the country, is being supported and expanded by the investment under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, the Action Plan for Apprenticeship 2021-2025, the Adult Literacy for Life Strategy and Future FET: Transforming Learning, the FET strategy 2020-2024. Every ETB, including LMETB, has a Strategic Performance Agreement with SOLAS for the period of 2022-2024, which sets out each ETBs contribution to the 12 agreed national targets. In addition, each agreement is effectively an implementation framework for the above strategies, with commitments and actions included to support achievement of the overall Transforming Learning agenda. A copy of the LMETB Strategy Performance Agreement is available on the SOLAS website at www.solas.ie/f/70398/x/ec1b6cc5b5/lmetb-agreement.pdf
My Department has provided significant capital investment in Louth’s FET infrastructure in recent years. The Department’s greatest investment in FET capital to date is in the Advanced Manufacturing and Training Centre of Excellence (AMTCE) in Dundalk. Initial investment of circa €9m in premises allowed for the acquisition of the property, phase 1 enabling works and provision of state of the art equipment. The Phase 2 refurbishment works, at a cost of circa €11.9 million, are ongoing.
In addition, several smaller scale capital investments have also recently been made, including:
• an allocation of €507,500 for 2023 under the FET Devolved Capital Grant (DG) in April. The DG provides flexible capital funding to ETBs to support small-scale building works (including health and safety works, access works, refurbishment, energy upgrades etc.) and equipment purchase or renewal, including ICT;
• Funding under the Emergency Health and Safety Works (EHSW) for roof works for the FE Administration Offices in Dundalk, with works currently ongoing. An application for boiler works to this building is also being advanced;
• The Strategic Infrastructure Upgrade Fund (SIUF) for the FET sector, announced in February 2022, supports ETB capital projects to upgrade existing FET infrastructure and provide a high quality teaching and learning environment, aligned with the principles of the FET College of the Future.
• A project for LMETB’s Drogheda Institute of Further Education was approved to proceed to the next stage in August 2022. The brief validation meeting, to firm up the scope for the project, took place on 22nd of May 2023;
• The Prism Building in Drogheda, a new facility that will focus on training electrical apprentices, is scheduled to open its doors to its first intake of 98 apprentices in July 2023. There are 8 electrical workshops in the facility that will train 280 electrical apprentices annually.
SOLAS is currently supporting nine capital projects being delivered by LMETB, in respect of maintenance and improvement of their FET accommodation. The estimated investment in these projects on a multi-annual basis is estimated at over €70million.
Turning to Higher Education in the region, Dundalk Institute of Technology (DKIT) is in receipt of Exchequer funding under the Technological Universities Transformation Fund and has previously received assistance from a Special Advisor in the Higher Education Authority, in support of its efforts to achieve TU status.
My Department remains supportive of DKIT's strategic goals, within the parameters of related policy and legislative provisions. However, it is a matter for the governing body of any higher education institution as to where it seeks to strategically position that institution on the higher education landscape. As an autonomous higher education institution, the progression of its strategic objectives and their attainment must be driven by the Institute itself in the first instance as led out by their recently appointed president and their governing body.
My Department has recently approved DKIT’s North Building Roof & Boiler project to proceed to tender stage with a view to the works in question being completed in Q1 2024.
The PJ Carroll’s Apprenticeship Expansion Project aims to expand the capacity of DKIT to deliver apprentice education in the Plumbing and Electrical trades and involves the refurbishment of existing vacant spaces within the DKIT PJ Carroll’s building to provide workshop, classroom and storage facilities. Work commenced on site in December 2022 and are on-going. Works are due for substantial completion in Q2 2023.
The Technological Sector Strategic Projects Fund (TSSPF) was launched by my Department early last year to support additional capacity, upgrading and enhancement of current infrastructure, including research and innovation activity across the IOT and TU sector. A proposal put forward by DKIT was successful at the first stage of the assessment process and is currently being developed as part of the preliminary business case stage process in line with relevant public spending code requirements.
