Colleges told to make cuts, or Quinn will

The country’s third-level institutions have been told to make cuts by the end of the year or risk having Education Minister Ruairi Quinn do it for them.

Mr Quinn, said there was too much duplication of courses in the institutions.

“You know better about the contours of your own landscape than we do here in Dublin but, regrettably, if you don’t actually make the commonsense and hard decisions, somebody else will have to make them for you and we may not make them with the same sensitivity that you yourselves possess,” he said.