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.

Mr Quinn said that, if the institutions did not act, he would make the decisions, while taking advice from the Higher Education Authority (HEA).

He said the HEA would shortly re-enter a period of engagement with all the institutions. The minister said he expected to have the HEA’s advice on a new configuration for higher education by early spring.

Chairwoman of Institutes of Technology Ireland (IOTI) and president of Limerick IT, Maria Hinfelaar, said the institutions were already discussing ways of achieving savings and efficiencies and the process would be speeded up to meet the year-end deadline.

“It is really all about teasing out all the details on how to do that and deepening the collaborations that we already have,” she said.