Committee for the Economy – 11 June 2025

The Committee for the Economy meeting held at 10.0am on 11 June 2025 at Queen’s Student Union, the Cube, Belfast.

On the agenda:

Committee Business

Oral and written evidence – Queen’s University Belfast, Higher Education funding etc.
• Professor Sir Ian Greer, Queen’s University Belfast
• Dr Ryan Feeney, Queen’s University Belfast
• Kieran Minto, QUB Students’ Union
• Professor Margaret Topping, Queen’s University Belfast

Departmental oral and written evidence – pausing of energy efficiency grant scheme
• Ryan White, DfE
• Katrina Duddy, DfE
• Daniel Purdy, Invest NI
• Dr Vicky Kell, Invest NI

SL1 Construction Industry Training Board Northern Ireland (CITB NI) Levy Order 2025

Committee Business

See full agenda: https://lk.cmte.fyi/e9vw

…from Kate Nicholl, Gary Middleton and our other two colleagues should be here but may be late. Declarations of interest members, anyone at this stage? I suppose I should declare about student loan because no doubt that will come. Hopefully nearly there on that one. Okay, Chair, persons, business members will have seen the reports in respect of appointment of a new Chief Executive of Tourism Northern Ireland, coming all the way from Lagan Valley to take this over. So are members content that we write to the outgoing Chief Executive thanking him for his service and a speedy recovery and also a letter to the new Chief Executive congratulating her on her appointment? Agreed. Draft minutes members are at page seven. Are members content they’re a true and accurate reflection of our deliberations on the 4th of June? Agreed. Great, thank you. Item six then members will be our first evidence session from Queen’s University and the committee will receive evidence from the university. I refer members to the Clark covering note and evidence that has been submitted and I invite forward our colleagues if that is okay. So we have Professor Sir Ian Greer who is President and Vice-Chancellor of the University, Professor Margaret Topping, Pro Vice-Chancellor for Global Engagement, Dr Ryan Feeney Vice-President for Governance and External Affairs and also the University’s Registrar and Ciaran Minto who is President of the Students’ Union. Colleagues firstly thank you for hosting the committee here today. The committee recognises the vital role that this institution plays in the economy and the life of Northern Ireland and across these islands so we’re delighted to be here and I’m very happy to hand over to you at this stage. Well thank you Cian and welcome to all to Queen’s University. It’s a great pleasure to have you with us today and we do hope this meeting and indeed the visit to East that you’re going on later will demonstrate to you the importance of having a sustainable higher education sector here in Northern Ireland. Indeed we want a sector that flourishes, a sector that delivers not just for the economy but for our society and perhaps most importantly for our young people. Now today as you said Chair I’m joined by Professor Margaret Topping Vice-Chancellor for Global Engagement, Dr Ryan Feeney Vice-President of Governance and External Affairs and the University Registrar and also by Ciaran Minto and Ciaran is the President of the Students’ Union. He finishes in four weeks time but he’s had an absolutely fantastic year with lots of really good success and I would like the committee to join me in congratulating Ciaran on and indeed the whole Students’ Union on their recent success in the number one in the UK. Being first in the UK is a tremendous achievement and I think it’s testament to the commitment and the work that the SU leadership team have done under Ciaran’s direction so congratulations Ciaran. Congratulations Ciaran, when I was at this institution I ran for election to the student council and got three votes so congratulations you’ve been much more successful with your electorate here at the university than I ever was. So I should probably give the committee a little bit of background on Queen’s. We’ve got 25,000 students, 4,300 staff and over 206,000 alumni across 137 countries. We’re regarded as one of the UK and Ireland’s leading universities, we’re ranked in the top 10% in the world and we’ve leveraged that position to drive truly inclusive economic growth throughout the region. Our economic impact is substantial, we deliver 3 .35 billion pounds of economic impact every year, that’s a 45% increase over the last six or seven years and the benefit to cost ratio we have is over 8 to 1, that’s actually the highest in the Russell Group part of the higher education sector. So for every pound that you invest in Queen’s University we generate eight for the economy. So I think that underscores the importance of Queen’s to our economy and indeed our place. So how have we delivered that impact? Well since I started back in 2018 in this role the university income has grown by almost 150 million pounds per year and we’ve created more than 800 additional jobs. We’ve grown our research, it’s now consistently above 100 million pounds of research income every year. We have more large awards, for example a 55 million pound award into the Futures Medicine Institute and we’ve got 60 million pounds worth of awards into co-centres in areas such as climate and food. We’ve been fantastic success in research quality, we’re ranked number one in the UK for agriculture and food and number four for biomedical sciences and number eight for law. These are no mean achievements. We’re also ranked second in the UK for entrepreneurial impact which is how we take our goods, our research and translate it into new products, goods and services and we’re in the top 10 universities for the number of UK spin-outs. So our impact in the Northern Ireland economy is really substantial. Importantly we’ve been fully supportive of the Belfast Region City Deal. We see that as a game changer for our economy. We are responsible for three of the major projects in the Innovation Pillar and we’ve put in more than 40 million pounds of university resource to pay for our contribution to these projects. We also carry the capital risk and the operational risk of all three of these projects. The capital risk is significant because of the inflationary effects on the construction industry and we have to meet that because the component of funding that we receive from government is capped and we know that we have to therefore find the shortfall. The fact that we can deliver these Belfast Region City Deal projects reflects the fact that we’ve been aligning our research, our teaching if you like, to what business, the economy, the society needs here in Northern Ireland and that’s evidenced by the fact that we’re working in areas such as health, advanced manufacturing, cyber security and data and digital sciences. But it’s not just economic impact because we’ve just recently been awarded University of Sanctuary status in May of this year and that reflects our efforts to facilitate access to higher education to local refugees, asylum seekers and migrant communities. We do a lot with communities. Perhaps our flagship initiative is the QCAP initiative, Queen’s Community in Place. That’s helped community partners to directly leverage over 17.4 million pounds in funding, all of which is going directly into these communities. So the impact that we have is not simply here on campus, it’s across the region. And indeed just two weeks ago Queen’s launched with QCAP a 5.7 million piece plus funded project aimed at transforming the health challenges by supporting people living with substance abuse and alcohol abuse in Northern Ireland. Now that’s a lot we can achieve, that’s a lot we have achieved and we do all of that with no additional government funding for higher education. We do it all with CAP student numbers and we do it all with no increase in university fees. Indeed one might argue that Northern Ireland is actively disinvesting in the biggest driver of the Northern Ireland economy, the HE sector, as we’ve seen a 40% reduction in real terms in our funding since 2011. Since 2021 the real terms reduction in the teaching grant has amounted to 17.5 million pounds. That’s been wholly absorbed by this university. So despite successive programme for government since 2011 identifying the theme of economic growth as a central priority, we’ve not really as a society, as an economy, put our money where our mouth is to try and make that happen. Now the teaching cost for our home students exceeds the price that we can charge. The funding we get for research is less than the cost of delivering it because of the UK funding model. We therefore rely on international student fee income to cross-subsidise the teaching and education of Northern Ireland students and to cross-subsidise our research. Around 40% of our total fee income comes from international students. That amounts to around 60 million pounds per year. And of course the sector, and this isn’t a Northern Ireland issue, this is a UK -wide issue, in fact it’s probably a West -wide issue, is the rapidly increasing cost base. Just recently for example we’ve seen a significant rise in national insurance which for Queen’s means we have to find an additional 4.6 million pounds each year. So despite that international cost base we’ve been doing quite well but over the last year or two we’ve seen a stark reduction in the number of international students choosing to come to the UK and Belfast and Queen’s are no exception. But that’s created a problem for us because as a leadership team we’ve got a responsibility to deliver a balanced budget. You’re all conscious of that. Our income and expenditure have to roughly align of course fluctuations from year to year but we’ve got to have income that matches our expenditure. So we’ve had to look at how we can diversify our income. One mitigating action has been a decision to become the first university in the Russell Group to open a campus in the Gujarat International Finance Tech City, or GIF City as it’s known in India, with our first cohort of students starting in January. So that’s going to be a shift in us moving into a market to attract students from India to our campus there but to give us an additional and diversified income stream. Margaret’s been leading in that programme and she can talk to you about it in more detail if you wish. Now alongside that increase in cost base we’ve seen that financial risk from the uncertainty in international student numbers. Until these students arrive we don’t know if they’re going to come so we’ve got significant uncertainty. I’ve told you about the risk of the Belfast Region City Deal in terms of operational and capital expenditure and there’s an additional risk because with only about six or seven weeks to go before the start of our new financial year we have absolutely no clarity on our block grant from the Department for the Economy. So we cannot set an institutional budget and we have projects that are under risk. So we’re in a very challenging situation. So let’s think what is at risk. The first thing I’d like to highlight is our young people because over 5,000 young people leave Northern Ireland each and every year to study in Great Britain to pursue their career there. Very few, less than a third, ever return. Our funding model in Northern Ireland does not provide local students with the opportunity to remain here, contribute to society and make a difference to the economy. For some they’re determined leavers and of course we should support them going but many are reluctant leavers. This is not a plea for Queen’s. This is a plea for the sector because Queen’s couldn’t solve this on its own. This is important for the sector. This is important for Northern Ireland. So we’re not capitalising, if you will, on our most precious advantage. Indeed we’re subventing Great Britain’s demographic deficit with our own young people. We cover their health care, their social care, the education costs up to 18 and yet the benefits are harvested elsewhere. Our higher education system suppresses opportunity for increased productivity and the opportunity to transform economic growth. Further that actually amplifies inequalities. Within the 12 regions of the UK, Northern Ireland comes second last for the number of higher education places per head. We’re last by a significant margin for investment and we’re in the last third as you all know for productivity. Great Britain indeed has 42% more full -time undergraduate places per head than Northern Ireland. That is stark inequality of access to higher education. To close that gap with GB we need to increase our full-time undergraduate places substantially from around 35,000 to 50,000 in total. With our current position we’re simply supporting growth in the GB economy at the expense of our own. So the consequences of all this are quite clear. Prospective investors and local employers who laud the quality of our students lament the scarcity of the provision. To break this cycle we’ve got to change our thinking, we’ve got to change our approach, we’ve got to change our policy. We need to think how we can invest in education and not see it as a cost, invest in universities and see them as ways in which we can drive the economy forward. Indeed if you look across the world at any cluster of innovation you’ll find a university at its heart. Stanford would be an obvious one but here in Belfast we’re no exception. The universities drive forward our economy. We’d like to work together with government, we’d like to work in partnership because we believe that’s the way forward. We think there is a triple helix of universities working with government, working with business that by that interaction can create a triple helix if you like that will create that virtual cycle of success. So we want to grow the sector that includes expansion of the UU McGee campus. We’ve absolutely no issue with that. We think it’s important for the sector to grow but we have to emphasise what we want to see is growth and not simply displacement. Displacing funding, students, staff, initiatives from Belfast to Derry won’t solve the problem but true growth will certainly help. So we certainly support growth of the sector whether that’s in Derry or in Belfast we’d be fully behind that. We also support the principle of a review of higher education funding. We think that’s long overdue but we know that it’s not going to have much impact unless it’s truly independent and includes tuition fees within its scope. Everything’s got to be on the table so we don’t think that they’ll work unless there’s a strong commitment not just to the quality of the report but also to a commitment to the findings being implemented that the report identifies. We also should in the course of that think about how we position the Republic of Ireland students whose classification at present is as a home student. So when we receive students from south of the border and we get around 4,000 applications a year at present and we accept that student it means that there’s one less place for a student from Northern Ireland. Now we want to welcome these students this is an inclusive university but we want to welcome students from Northern Ireland too and we believe it would be important to take the ROI students out of that number cap and let them come to the university freely if they wish but not at the expense of places for Northern Ireland students. Finally although it’s not technically in your remit you’ll be conscious of some of the recent changes in UK-wide policy and in particular I’m thinking about the immigration white paper. The changes in visas set out there it’s likely to have a negative impact on recruitment of international students to the UK. We think we’ve got to redouble our efforts to be an attractive place. It’s unlikely we can change the visa issue but there is one other aspect in that white paper which they flagged and that was a six percent levy on international students to help fund other aspects of the UK economy. Technically that doesn’t apply to Northern Ireland that’s a decision for Northern Ireland but we believe that would be very damaging to our universities and the economy and so we’d urge you to use your pressure use your authority to oppose such a move given the obvious and severe consequences for the sector. And this morning I was listening to the the press releases percolating through about the spending review that will be announced later. As part of that spending review there’s going to be an 86 billion pledge to increase science and technology spending that’s very welcome and we’d really like Northern Ireland to benefit from that so we would like your support in making sure that Northern Ireland companies, Northern Ireland universities, Northern Ireland people benefit from that investment as we drive economic growth. So thank you all for coming today, thank you for taking the time to listen to this opening statements we’re all very keen to answer your questions and have a discussion with you and to develop a position where we work in partnership to address the needs of Northern Ireland. Thank you very much indeed Vice-Chancellor for that and can I thank you and your team for your continued dedication to Northern Ireland. Just so I’m clear and the committee is clear, did I pick you up correctly Vice -Chancellor in saying that the university is still not aware of its budget set by the Department for the Economy? That’s correct Chair, about two months ago we were informed by the Department that we may face a significant cut which might be as high as 10.5 million to take effect from the 1st of August. That clearly was a major concern to us because at short notice it’s very difficult to make changes that allow us to make these savings or to find the income elsewhere. We’ve had ongoing correspondence and discussion with the Department to try and reduce that obviously but as yet we’ve got no clear position what our budget or what our allocation will be for August and therefore it’s difficult for us as a university to set a budget. And have you given any as the way as a committee have been struggling to try and get that information as well, have you been given any insight as to when the final budget settlement will be allocated to you? We’ve had nothing definite, we’re told it will be soon but nothing definite. And I just think that as a committee it’s something that we should you know seriously need to be pressing on because although the academic financial year runs from August, these decisions need to be made now and made quickly. In spite of the Department, this university has continued to invest particularly in widening participation Vice -Chancellor and can I thank you and the institution particularly for your work in my constituency on the Shankill Road and your support for our city, a cross-community group who would never walk through the doors of a university and this institution rather than them having to do their graduation in the Republic of Ireland, do it here. For some people and their families it’s the first time they’ve ever stepped into a higher education setting and it gives them the inspiration to want to come here and you’ve put your money where your mouth is in terms of financially supporting them so can I thank you for that. Could you maybe just talk about the work that you do right across Belfast and the wider region about widening participation? Oh absolutely, it’s something I’m quite passionate about Chair. We want Queen’s to be accessible to anyone with the ability to come here and succeed. Our flagship programme is our pathway programme that identifies students in the last year of post -primary school, people who’ve got the ability but might not have the support to do well. We allow them access to Queen’s to see what it’s all about to make sure that they feel they can walk through the doors. We then discount their grades for entry by two so if the requirement for a course was two A’s and a B they would get in with three B’s and we raise money philanthropically to give them a bursary of a thousand pounds every year while they’re here. Interestingly the outcome for these students is actually better than the middle class cohort, they’ve got a higher rate of first class honours and two ones than others so they’ve got incredible hunger if you will for success, they do very well and we’d like to support that. We started that programme seven or eight years ago with about a dozen students, there’s now more than 350 I think have been through that programme. So that’s one example but overall I think it’s around 32% of our students who are home students based in Northern Ireland come from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. Brilliant thank you and then just in relation to the higher education review the department usually publishes end of year progress reports and gives themselves green ratings so when you mark your own homework you tend to give yourself a good mark but have you had any engagement in relation to the review because from my reading of this Vice-Chancellor the panel to do this report still hasn’t even been set up? No we’ve had no direct input into the development of the report. Okay no problem at all. Just to say Chair sorry just with no direct input but officials have consulted on our thinking around the report and as the Vice -Chancellor said we’ve repeatedly indicated we want an independent panel. Yes and I suppose you know there’s no point doing a review if it’s just going to re-slice the cake, if the cake’s not going to get any bigger all they’re going to do is displace students and finance from Belfast to other parts. In terms of the pressure that the students from the Republic of Ireland in terms of the massing cap, what are the numbers in terms of actual students from the Republic of Ireland that are at the institution and how has that grown over recent years? Yeah it’s grown significantly but this is Margaret’s area so I’ll pass over to Margaret and give you the figures. I don’t have the exact figures, Ram do you have those? Yeah we have a thousand students at the moment who are in the university from ROI. Yes. There’s been a significant increase over the last number of years. Our attrition rates Chair are usually if you get 6,000 applications you get 600 students. Yeah.
Our applications this year are up again so we have record numbers I think our applications at the moment Alistair’s in the back there but they’re sitting around 8,000. Okay. So we have seen a substantial increase in people moving from Republic of Ireland to Belfast. The reality is we have no methodology or evidence behind it but anecdotally it’s due to the cost of living in Dublin. Yes.
We offer a very good proposition around accommodation and we offer a good wraparound. Belfast’s a good city to live in in terms of cost of living but as the Vice-Chancellor indicated unfortunately we want to welcome these students but there is a displacement issue around local students. And what is the rationale for the department including them within the Northern Ireland numbers? It’s not clear to us. Clearly there’s a reciprocal arrangement because our students can go south. Yes.
But the numbers are not in equilibrium. Sure.
The numbers coming north are much greater than those going south. So just to support that Chair there’s about 11% of the school leaving population in the south give or take going north. It’s less than 0. or around 0.5% going north to south. Okay. I’m going to open up to colleagues who may come back in later. Sinéad. Well thanks very much for your presentation and thank you for all of the work that you do in relation to driving the economy and in many ways the engine of our economy and to hit all of the targets that we need to hit. We need our higher education institutions to be successful and obviously you’ve talked quite a bit about the pressures and the sustainability and the stability of the universities based on the current financial model. And we too are concerned about it and we would like to see that review of higher education funding as soon as possible. Now I can’t say with any certainty or give you any kind of comfort because I asked the question yesterday from the Minister regarding her plans for the future for university and really basically she referred to the review and currently looking at the terms of reference and had no clear indication of what the timing would be for that. But I also asked in the interim had she any plans to increase budgets or spending for the university and again there was no nothing came forward. How critical is it to get extra funding from the department because as you outlined you’re getting something like you said a 3.5 % growth since 2011 in the funding. I mean that’s a reduction really in terms and what alternative? Obviously you know as a party the SDLP we are not for pushing down on increasing student fees because we believe that the department needs to actually step up and support our institutions. So what’s the alternatives in this current financial pressures? So there are very few alternatives. You’re absolutely right we’ve been effectively disinvesting in an economic driver which is the university. We’ve been struggling to make ends meet with the allocation that we get. There aren’t many businesses who would sell a product cheaper than the cost and so we’re creating a deficit with ourselves. So that’s why we have to look at how we diversify our income streams whether that’s international students overseas campuses. We’ve got to do more to bring money in to cross-subsidise. We don’t have an issue with that cross -subsidy model. It’s widespread across the UK but that cross -subsidy model is stressed indeed in some places it’s distressed by the loss of international students. So if you’ve got three legs in a stool and two of them are already short and we shorten the third one everything’s going to drop down and that’s our worry. So if we can’t increase the block grant and we can’t increase the number of students the only option we’ve got is to ask for an increase in the fees which is why you’ll be aware that the leaders of all the set all the higher education institutions in Northern Ireland wrote to the minister a few weeks ago suggesting that we might be able to increase the fees. We were very reluctant to do that but we felt we had no option and we only did it on the basis that we’d also increase student support because it’s really critical to us that we must not disadvantage further people who are already disadvantaged in our society. We want to continue to welcome over 30 percent of people in that category to Queen’s going forward. That mustn’t be disturbed. So we can only increase fees if we also increase support for the students. In an ideal world of course we would have a higher block grant we wouldn’t have to do that but we’re conscious that we’re not in that ideal world. Given that this really affects our students I’d like to ask Kieran if he wants to contribute. In terms of what you’re saying at the start you know I think it’s important to remember that the university is expected and us as a union are expected to provide more and more services than maybe we would traditionally. I mean you might have seen on your way in you walk past the food bank you know we dress it up we call it pantry but you know it is a food bank. You know I walk past that every day on my way into work and the fact that we have a have a system where students who are trying to better themselves are trying to become our next generation of doctors and engineers and so on are having to go to a food bank you know so they don’t pass out during exams. I mean that’s not the sort of system that I think we should have you know in Northern Ireland. We are providing mental health support, we’re providing well-being support, filling in for gaps with our health care system, we’re providing you know accommodation, we’re providing everything a wraparound experience for our students but not giving the extra funding to do that. So we’re expected to provide far more than a university tuition it would have aside from education and research but not given the funding to cover that. In terms of you know the whole tuition fee angle and so on I fully understand the position that the university is in in terms of its finances and I understand that they’re very much backed into a corner. You know our opinion as a union would be that the tuition fees are not a long-term solution it’s a short-term solution it’s a cash injection that can allow the university to sort of cover its expenses but long term it doesn’t work. We look across the water in England and we see universities that were handed you know massive amounts of money through tuition fees that are firing staff that are struggling to provide the same services we are. You know England has the highest fees across all of Europe. Are they able to provide a better quality education than Queen’s? No not at all. So for me the way I look at it is that’s you know that would provide the university a cash injection but the amount of money that we’re talking about when it comes to government budgets is not massive. That would have given the university below 10 million as I understand it in terms of extra funding. I think that there’s other angles we can look at if we actually drill down into how we fund higher education. Try to base some of the decisions we’re making on models that are working across Europe for other economies of roughly our size other small economies and look at how they fund their higher education and look at the support that they put in. As the Vice-Chancellor was saying earlier you know the university is really your bedrock for your economy. You cannot create a high-skill high-value economy without a university providing those workers. Every business leader we speak to through our enterprise department is saying that they want Queen’s graduates. They want the skills we can provide but that we just we can’t get students through the door fast enough. So that’s for me is the basis and when it comes down to it it’s a choice about allocation of money. I see the university as a good spend of money that generates revenue long term not something that’s you know a money hole or a money sink. I mean I appreciate where the institutions are coming from in relation to finding solutions to their current financial situation but I think you know to push down on students is not the the place to go because it’s not going to be sustainable and it’s not going to future-proof our institutions and we value them highly but just on on student poverty have you got data in relation to the level of student poverty that Queen’s is experiencing? I don’t have exact numbers but what I can tell you is that the vast majority of students work far more than the recommended 20 hours. The university puts forward you know recommendations that students you know have a have a clear delineation of time between part-time work and their studies. We know that large numbers of students are working essentially full-time while studying full-time on paper. I don’t know any student that doesn’t work at least one or two jobs and then are also attending a food bank. The student poverty rate I think is something that sometimes gets washed over or sort of ignored. Sometimes it’s seen as your time at university ah you know I didn’t have much money you know going through university. Yes but I think the rates today are a little bit different. It’s not that students don’t have the money to go out partying it’s they don’t have the money to pay their bills or to heat their homes in the winter you know. So those student poverty rates are higher than I think people think. We hand out 10,000 free meals. We handed out 10,000 free meals last year. We get hundreds of students through our pantry every week. Thousands through tens of thousands through every year you know looking for food, looking for very simple basic products, hygiene products, things like that. So I don’t have exact numbers but you know I think it speaks for itself. Okay. Professor Ian you mentioned the city deals and the prospect of well the risk you mentioned the risk of city deals and the investment that the universities are going to make on the city. Can you talk more about that risk in relation to investment? Yes certainly. So the city deal projects have taken longer than we would have liked to develop. They’ve been ongoing since early 2018 and they’re only now just coming to fruition. Over that period as you’ll appreciate there’s been significant increases in inflation and that’s been a challenge because the funding allocations came through some years ago. We were perfectly content with them but with inflation we’ve got to pick up that difference. So as we’re building the three centres and one is almost complete the Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Centre at Global Point is looking pretty good. It’ll be have a topping out ceremony fairly soon. The health related project I reach is over in a hospital site a few hundred yards away. That’s in the demolition phase taking down the property that we’ve acquired to do the development on the land. And the third project is Momentum 1.0 which is looked in computer science. You’ll notice that we’ve not started that one yet and of course that’s a concern to us when we’re not conscious of what our budget is going to be in August. We therefore have to be careful about what commitments we undertake until we get that budget clarity. It’s quite hard to know precisely what we can do and when we can spend the money. So we’re absolutely committed to the city deal projects. We think they’re going to transform Northern Ireland but we’re obviously at a difficult time from a university perspective with regards to the funding that we’ve got because there are so many projects that we want to do. We don’t want to stop anything. We certainly don’t want to have a negative impact on our student experience, on our research or our community impact. But we are conscious that without knowing what our budget is we’re left in a bit of a no-man’s land as to what we can sign off and progress with. And I’m sure you’ll all be conscious of that with your own responsibilities. Professor Ian, what percentage of the Belfast, the Greater Belfast City Deal is Queen’s actually receiving? The overall deal is worth the order of a billion pounds. The innovation part of it which concerns Queen’s makes up probably about a fifth of that. So over 200 million, probably around 225 million of that funding would come to Queen’s for these three major innovation projects. And within that we’ve put in I think 43 million pounds of our own resources split across those three projects. So it’s a significant investment from the city deans that you’re receiving and you’re making a significant contribution as well. Absolutely, it’s a great investment. It will deliver lots of jobs, lots of capacity, lots of capability for NI. So we think it’s transformative and absolutely the right way to go. But we’re conscious that there’s significant pressures and costs. We also carry the operational risk. So each of these centres, they’re not university centres, they’re university operated centres that pull in industry. So let me give you an example. Our economy as you know is largely small and medium-sized entities. Often they get to the stage where they can’t develop their products or their services further because they don’t have the R&D capacity or potential. So they can use our facilities, these city deal facilities to come in, access top class equipment, staffed by top class people from university to develop the new product or the new services, take it back out and put it into the marketplace so they can grow the economy. So these are industry facing centres rather than university centres. We operate them, we will make sure that they’re successful but they’ll only be successful if you work in partnership with industry. So it should absolutely help our economy grow. Okay, thank you. Can I just ask you another question and another angle about Marsden? You talked extensively about the need to increase Marsden places in order to help support the universities and make them more sustainable. You mentioned the figure 35,000 to 50 ,000 and also I appreciate in your remarks as well about supporting the expansion of the Magee campus, Ulster University in Derry. None of us wants to see, we want growth in our university numbers but it’s really important that all institutions support the growth of the Magee campus as well because as you outlined the economic impact that a university has for not just the city that it’s placed in but it’s the wider objectives of the economy as well. So in relation to those discussions have you spoken to the minister about the raising of Marsden and what other directions, I know we’ve talked about the ROI students and if that could be taken out of the Marsden numbers but what other conversations are you having with the department in relation to that? So for seven years I’ve been talking about getting the Marsden issue addressed and I’ve been unsuccessful I have to say. I understand the problem because it’s linked to funding but it does create terrible inequality for our young people. The figure I gave you of moving from 35,000 places to 50,000 places is to put us on a par with England in terms of the number of higher education places per head of population. We’ve got a terrible problem with inequality here. Our young people cannot access higher education locally so even if they want to stay we send many of them away and that actually costs our economy more not just in the loss of them never coming back to work in the economy but also because the cost of to Northern Ireland of them having their education in England is actually higher than them staying here so economically it doesn’t add up. Now in other small nations, Scotland’s a good example, they lose around five percent of their young people but they’ve a substantial increase coming from Northern Ireland coming from England so they end up in a positive position I think it’s about net plus 18 percent whereas we end in a position of minus 28 percent net so we’re not attracting people in from GB we are increasing we’re working hard to do that because if we’re losing a lot of people we should be attracting people in but just now the main group of people coming in are the international students and that’s why we’re particularly worried about their loss because they don’t just help the university they actually help our economy. International students are a fantastic economic driver they deliver fantastic economic impact many of them stay on and work for a year or two in areas where there are skill shortages and of course they also go back home and spread a very positive image of Northern Ireland of Queen’s University and I’m sure of Ulster University too so protecting that international cohort is really important to us but also thinking about that inequality piece I’m very concerned that we offer a different set of opportunities to young people in Northern Ireland than those who live in England receive that can’t be right we’ve got to address that and that’s the scale of the increase we need and the order of 15,000 places if we want to be on a par with England. Brian? Yeah can I just support what the vice chancellor’s saying and she needed to give you a bit of a reassurance three years ago Sir Ian visited University of Ulster McGee and did a joint press event with Paul Bartholomew outlining our support for the expansion of McGee and that remains this institution’s position in terms of trying to increase the sector let me give you some statistics so as Sir Ian indicated 5,000 people are now leaving Northern Ireland every year to seek higher education in GB that’ll go up to 10,000 by 2030 statistics that the committee will have so if we put this in context the three universities in Liverpool have 12,000 undergrads from Northern Ireland currently in their cohort we have about 12,000 undergrads you have the same if we could take 6,000 of those we will solve the problem in Derry, London Derry and that’s something that we’re committed to two other points that would make about Derry, London Derry we have 180 students in Elton and Galvin at the moment medics that are currently in placement we have a very strong research program in place a very sizable research program in place with Seagate and we have about two and a half thousand students from the city of Derry here in Queens so we’re committed to Derry and are completely supportive of UU’s position on Derry and have a very good relationship with vice chancellor Bartholomew and his team and will continue to support them in every way possible however we’ve made this very clear repeatedly to department officials it can’t be about displacement it can’t be about taking resources from one institution or any other any other part of the UU institution and put them into the city it has to be about growth so the solution to this problem is lifting Mason and we need to find a way of doing that because as Sir Ian has indicated there is no way that 5,000 people want to leave this region every year they’re forced to leave that’s a very important statement they’re forced to leave by current Northern Ireland executive policy and a lot of people that can’t afford to leave are the ones that are actually having to leave because the bar has been set very high here for entry to your universities and therefore sometimes you know those that can least afford it are actually having to leave and take on the higher tuition fees in other universities in England so I mean I do I’ve always supported the growth of of Mason and it has to be done in a you know a strategic way as well it’s just not opening the doors of our institutions we need to make sure that we address our economic needs and the needs of our students as well and obviously I would like a lot of it to be ring-fenced for McGee campus but however I do think it is absolutely economic madness to cap your economic driver so look I probably have other questions. Just with the Vice-Chancellor’s permission can I just come in quickly Chair so Vice-Chancellor Bartholomew’s statistic which starkly outlines this position if you get three C’s in England you have a 50% chance of attending a local university you get three C’s in Northern Ireland you have a five percent chance so that’s the unfortunate position we find ourselves in as Vice-Chancellor Greer’s outlined young people from low -income families are the people most impacted because pathway programs that Sir Ian Dears credit has put in place allows them to get access to to Queen’s but it’s the kids from the lower quantiles that have been forced to go to GB they’re paying the higher fees and they’re the people that are ending up in higher poverty so the entire model’s broken so the narrative out there that says that raising fees will in any way preclude people from access in higher education we can agree to disagree on that the augur report in England shows that’s not the case but it’s actually the dichotomy it’s people from low-income backgrounds that are not achieving the required grades that are being forced to go but can I sorry just want to come back one once one second about the tuition fees as well tuition fees will impact on poverty for students and you know whenever students get to the point of 28 29 30s their their student fees are taken into context for them buying a house my daughter’s recently purchased a house and it was all put in in relation to the the the mortgage that she was allowed to to take out so it does have an impact and we’re not you know I am not here to squeezed out on our students we need to fix higher education we have failed to do so and we’ve disinvested in it for many many many years so maybe just one final point chair without dominating this perhaps what we need to do is look at tuition fees in a different context so vice chancellor green and others have been asking for a while that we don’t take a very prescriptive approach in this what if we looked at a position where we have a means-tested approach where people from low-income families get free access to higher education and those with more means pay more I think we need to you know be revolutionary in terms of the approach that we’re taking here and not looking at the very sort of constrained approach that we take at the moment because we’re with you we want young people from low-income families coming to Northern Ireland universities Ian Greer has been on the record about that and has done more than most to make that happen that’s very clear the proofs in the pudding but the reality is that the current funded model is actually doing the opposite of what you want and that’s what we need to fix 100% and listen this is political hardness from the Northern Ireland executive over many many years and this this conversation really annoys me because students do not pay to go to university in Northern Ireland it’s a graduate tax they will not pay it until then and I get people’s points by saying that it’s taken into account for mortgages but the other option is that they go to the university in other parts of the United Kingdom and pay triple yeah so if politicians me included don’t want university fees to be increased tell me where you’re taking the money from you can’t have your cake on this issue and eat it Jonathan thanks chair thank you very much for your presentation so far it really does sound like a story of two halves as such you know this fact file in itself shows the incredible impact that Queens has had to the Northern Ireland economy statistics that’s that stands in stark contrast to many other sectors you know particularly that 3.35 billion annually you know that that in itself is something we all should be rightly part of and use an institution should I suppose probably then I look at the other half and we’ve talked about the difficulties for the sector and I want to focus on the joint letter that was issued from the universities and to all parties and indeed executive ministers and you know there’s a paragraph particularly enough that I just wanted to raise so the current irritation or reiteration of the funding model for higher education in Northern Ireland is not sustainable since diverging from the rest of the UK in 2011 tuition fees increases have consistently fallen below inflation while costs have risen dramatically this has resulted in a significant growing real-term funding gap as compared to the original intended model now the university said that they offered a compromise as such and much debate has been around you know increasing tuition fees is that the right way to try to to offset some of the challenges that university has faced so can I ask you in your own analysis is it your belief that by rising tuition fees in Northern Ireland inflationary I think it was something in the region of a thousand pound do you believe that that would have had a significant impact in participation in university courses by those particularly of a socially disadvantaged background in Northern Ireland? The short answer is no but first of all I’d like to say that that letter was signed by the principals from St Mary’s, Strandmillas as well as Paul Bartholomew and myself and I think that shows the level of concern that exists and the fact I think the phrase has been used we were backed into a corner if you like because we can’t change our numbers English universities could deal with some of these stresses by increasing the numbers of students they would recruit we couldn’t do that we saw an increase in the block grant that clearly wasn’t going to happen indeed we were told we’re going to have a cut so the only option we’re left with was fees and what you’re absolutely right our concern was that it could impact negatively participation which is why in that letter I can’t remember the precise phrasing but you’ll have it in front of you that we also asked for a commensurate increase in student support if we were going to go down that path none of the the bodies would have countenanced an increase in fees without more student support for those who might be disadvantaged by this. So the joint letter and I do note that it was from all of the institutions should that have come as a shock to those in receipt like I would imagine there’s quite a degree of consultation with political parties about the situation that you found yourself in and also how the increase that that was being suggested would in a sense you know offset concerns regarding access by an increase in the maintenance loan what was that level of engagement and then subsequent following the letter what was the direct engagement with the minister as to how they were going to address the very real concerns that you highlighted in your joint letter? So first of all I hope it wouldn’t be a surprise surprise to anyone because I’ve been a broken record in this for the last seven years and talking about mass and talking about funding issues because we believe as you’ve heard already this needs to be a fundamental review of higher education personally I’d go further and I’d say tertiary education because we’ve got some terrific further education colleges in Northern Ireland that are not fully utilised to their full potential and I think we need a system that involves both the colleges and the universities working together to address the needs of our young people and address the needs of the economy. I’d like to see greater movement between them so that people could leave Queen’s and go to an FE college and vice versa indeed a lot of our students actually come from Belfast Met I think they’re one of our biggest providers of entrance so it shouldn’t be a surprise we had and I think that applies to all the HE bodies I think we’ve all been having discussions about having a review of how the sector is funded. In terms of that the letter per se we did release with spads across the political parties so there shouldn’t have been a surprise and Ryan can perhaps pick that up and tell you how we did communicate that both in advance and following the letter. So just to follow on Jonathan we made all the political parties aware that we were drafting the letter we made all the political parties aware of what was in the letter we shared the letter with some people who asked for it and we discussed it I don’t think anything in the letter came as a shock we briefed our trade unions in advance we briefed the student union in advance and Ciarán and his team made it very clear they objected to the position but understood the financial position we found ourselves in so we made sure that there was all considerable stakeholder engagement before the letter was sent to the party leaders. Okay in relation to the 5,000 students that are leaving Northern Ireland and in many cases as you’ve outlined some of the most disadvantaged are actually being pushed down a road where they have to pay an even higher tuition fee rather than trying to find a way that we could accommodate them here through a sustainable model what percentage or has there been any work done in terms of those 5,000 students to suggest the percentage that are actually reluctant leavers there will be some that will want to leave and that’s for understandable reasons but has there been any work done on that particular point? I’m not made of any clear statistic in that. Okay no that’s fair enough. On the issue of the immigration white paper that that you’ve mentioned and this is where I was supposed probably I would like maybe from Margaret obviously the interaction of the the campus in India. Is it your belief that some of the visa challenges which you have outlined in terms of international students will be offset by the the campus in India? That would be our hope. I mean certainly the challenges it’s it’s been a very difficult and challenging situation in terms of international student recruitment to Belfast and the immigration white paper is making an already challenging situation more difficult. We will continue to be trying to encourage as many students as possible to come to the campus here in Belfast because as the vice-chancellor has said they they diversify the campus, they diversify the city, they bring an incredible amount of cultural and economic and social richness to the region as well. They’re also absolutely critical in filling that talent pipeline that our businesses here need but in the context of I mean what we see is that the drivers are and the future drivers are not that we will see an increase in more students coming here and that’s the same across the UK. So we’re having to look at innovative solutions and partly that is about recognising that our education system in here from ourselves from Ulster is a really important global export that we can now take into other countries and deliver there and that’s certainly where the sector is going to see growth. All indications are that TNE which is the broad term transnational education the broad term that’s used for delivering in country and that’s very much where the the shift is occurring for HE, the HE sector generally. Yeah and how will that campus and that arm of Queen’s University interface with the Northern Ireland economy in terms of net benefit? So our ambition for the Gift City campus is not simply that it is about bringing in students and delivering education. Now that’s a critical part of it and we will start by delivering four to five master’s programmes. What we want to do though is to deliver something stronger that also has an impact back here in Northern Ireland. So for example we have taken a quite a significant space in Gift City. Gift City as the Vice-Chancellor has said is a Gujarat international fintech city. It’s India’s first smart city, first green city. It has attracted a huge amount of business there are now about 900 plus businesses in Gift City in the STEM, finance, IT sectors and actually what we can do there is to create our campus as a footprint for global NI in India as well. We are, we have space where businesses from here could be going out spending time in Gift City to engage with all of those businesses that are in Gift City and indeed beyond. We’re working within Invest NI in India to see how we can present this opportunity to businesses here. We have a wonderful startup culture here and spin-out culture which the Vice-Chancellor has mentioned. Some of those you know early stage innovation driven enterprises could be having a soft landing in Gift City, linking in with business there but also in the wider community and the state of Gujarat is the biggest pharma centre in all of India. It’s also massive for chemical and chemical engineering, for agri-food, mechanical and aeronautical engineering, all areas where Northern Ireland has an incredible strength. So I think I mean in everything that we do internationally it isn’t just about selling queens, it is about selling global NI. So when we go out and we’ve done it in Gift City, we do it wherever we go, it’s about thinking about how we can create opportunities for businesses in country to link in with business here and so on. The Gift City campus gives us a really a physical footprint in which we can do that. I said we have space where we can give opportunities for businesses here to have a footprint where they can engage with business in India and develop those economic connections. Thank you and finally from me and just back on to the theme about the sustainability and the joint letter. Universities were quite clear that if we didn’t see something change in the funding model, whether that be an aspect on student fees and elsewhere in terms of mazing and others, that ultimately it would result in a reduction in undergraduate courses, further putting strain on accessibility and participation here locally. Can I ask if things don’t change, has the university essentially modelled it out? What are we looking like in terms of reduction in undergraduate courses? Well I hope none because we think it’s really important that we stay a comprehensive university to meet the needs of Northern Ireland. Other universities in GB have been shutting courses, if you look at Cardiff, Aberdeen for example, many courses have been shut down. We don’t think that’s the right way to go so that would be a very last resort for us. Instead what we’ve tried to do is first of all reduce our cost base and we had a voluntary severance scheme recently that you might be aware of to trim our cost base but we wanted to use that as a platform for growth. So our agenda is actually how can we grow the university’s income because we’ve taken the cost back as much as we feel we can and we think they’ll be damaging if we go further, such as closing down an area which we absolutely are not thinking about. So we’re looking at how we diversify the income streams and the gift city initiative is just one of these. So we’ve had a number of plans that we’re working on right now that we’ll be presenting to our senate over the next two or three meetings about how we start to grow the university because we absolutely do not want to go down the route that you’ve suggested, a route that others have taken. We want to stay a comprehensive university to meet the needs of Northern Ireland and if we aren’t funded by government we have to find other ways to do it. But do you accept it’s a real impossible threat if things don’t change? I think if the short answer is of course yes but we will do absolutely everything possible to mitigate that risk. That is not a course of action that we’re planning on or even thinking about but it would be the inevitable consequence if things do not become addressed. Okay could I just support what the vice -chancellor’s saying and maybe give some statistics to this. So the augur report that was released in terms of higher education in the UK indicates and that’s slightly dated that it costs about £13,000 to train an undergraduate student. At the moment we get about £4,700 from the student and give or take between £4,000 and £4,200 from the department and those numbers would be challenged but that’s where we’re at in terms of a grant. If you take that and look at Queens that have just under 12,000 students we get funding for about 7,500 students. The rest is subvented by the university and Ulster would be in the same position. So it’s just to underline to the committee the stark position that the higher education sector in Northern Ireland is in. As Sarain has indicated we are a massive economic driver. We are subventing, we are using our own spin-out resources, research income, commercial income and we’re one of the best in the UK for KPTs and everything else but the reality is that there’s a sizable amount of undergraduate subvention happening in both universities in Northern Ireland. Sarain also indicated the two university colleges who are part of our wider family, we’re there to support and make sure they’re sustained, they get a premium. So there’s a range of things that we’re doing at the moment to try and make sure that the higher education sector is sustained but the two universities do a sizable amount of work to keep the lights on and international students as Margaret indicated and all the commercial activity does that. Can I just jump in there as well to add on to speaking to my colleagues across the water in England and so on. They’re seeing support services and so on cut which just like us their students rely on very acutely. They’re seeing their food provisions, their mental health support, all of that being cut. So not just courses being cut but those supports that allow people to remain in university being cut. So I would imagine the English sector is going to see much higher dropout rates in the coming years and it’s the exact opposite way that you build a higher education system that can grow and that can support students. None of the rest of the English universities operate as anchor institutions for their local area. None of the rest of them engage with their local community in the same way that Queen’s does. None of the rest of them supply the amount of support in the way Queen’s does. I think it would be a disaster if we ended up going down the route like in England of cutting courses, cutting intakes or cutting supports provided to students. And can I maybe just add in the context of your question about gift city where we would be developing a footprint internationally. One of the key rules of that yes it’s about taking an education a world-class education to people who wouldn’t have access otherwise but what we would make there in terms of revenue would also be reinvested in here into our core activity which is supporting student experience, supporting research. All of which then are also the drivers for economic growth and that’s critical to the gift city campus idea. Let’s check on the letter that Jonathan referenced earlier Vice-Chancellor. Have you received an official response to that letter yet? No I don’t think it’s bad. I don’t think we’ve had a response but not an official response. So written of it so the department haven’t officially responded to you? No. So every higher education institution in Northern Ireland have come together over a month ago to contact the Minister and she hasn’t even replied. Okay Diana. Thank you very much to the panel for your presentation and for the supporting documents. I really commend your commitment to economic growth in Northern Ireland and particularly the welfare of students here so that that’s really reassuring and I do understand the constraints have been really well set out particularly in the letter. I just wanted to take you back to Sir Ian you mentioned the triple helix working with government, industry and academia. What contribution does industry make to supporting education in the higher sector? Have you any formal arrangements there? Is that something with a more holistic approach as an economic driver that there’s more coming from the advanced manufacturing sector for example or the veterinary science sector that can invest in the university outputs and give you more income? Yes and that’s the whole approach with the city deal for example where we are inviting business and industry into these facilities to make their products and services better so we get significant industry engagement there. We have a lot of industry contracts with for example with Rolls Royce to do research with them that’s very prevalent in engineering and to a lesser extent medicine and we are addressing skills as part of the Belfast Region City Deal. The skills part isn’t funded so we’re doing that ourselves and we’re trying to work with industry to make sure our graduates deliver what they need and Margaret did you want to come in? Yes well no please finish. Increasingly I think industry will play a bigger role in higher education going forward. We would like to see industry practitioners if you like coming into universities to deliver parts of the teaching or courses or develop higher level apprenticeships working with particular businesses and industries so that our students benefit not just from the Queen’s education but access business and industry experience so when they graduate they’ve got that real world experience and it makes their employability even higher and I should say our employability is one of the highest and the employability rate is one of the highest in the UK. Margaret did you want to add? Yes I was just going to add one other area where we have a really very well structured engagement with industry is through the postgraduate awards that are funded by the Department for the Economy. These are the PhD studentships that we receive every year. They’re absolutely critical and what we have done over the last couple of years is to shift a significant portion of those to what we call CAST awards which are collaborations for science and technology and those are awards where industry and academics are working together on a key challenge for local international national industry and the industry partner will put in a certain amount of support those projects but out of those we’re getting I mean it’s just something that we’re very very keen to continue to grow those awards because they are a way for us to address industry challenges again to drive economic growth but also to receive in -kind and financial support from industry to drive research. Thank you but even going back one step to the applicant coming to Queen’s or coming to any university is there more work can be done to encourage bursaries from industry and to address that skills pipeline that then those students once qualified may go back into industry in Northern Ireland? Can I jump in on that? Yeah I think we as a union have a lot of sort of connections with local businesses and for me that is one of the for me that’s one of the key drivers for how we look at the long -term sustainability of higher education is through those connections with local business. We are providing the skills force for local business they come to us with skills profiles that they’re looking to fill and we try our best to fill that for our next generation of workers. I think that we could you know within Northern Ireland try to build that better connection. Sometimes we still see sort of you know higher level apprenticeships degree level apprenticeships as kind of a bolt-on or experimental or kind of a new thing. For me I think we need to embed that a lot deeper, we need to embed the connections with industry a lot deeper and allow them to increase the number of bursaries, increase the support. If we’re providing them with a skilled workforce they should be giving back to the higher education institutes they’re training their workforce similar to how they would offer their own internal training. You know I also think that we in Northern Ireland have a very sort of traditional look at a degree it’s a very three -year in-out sort of model that’s not flexible it’s not based on lifelong learning it’s not based on retraining it’s not based on re-skilling that’s the angle that Queen’s has done a lot of work to move us more towards but I think as a as a higher education sector and I think you know with working with government in a comprehensive funding review we need to look more at that lifelong learning that longer term learning where people are working and studying at the same time and bringing in business and bringing in the financial support the business can provide so then we can provide them with the skills that they need. Thank you thank you and one last question comparing with other universities what is the earning potential of a graduate coming from Queen’s and in terms of what I imagine it depends on the the jobs available the roles available but what is the earning potential generally for graduates from Queen’s? It depends whether you look at their earnings potential in the context of Northern Ireland where salaries tend to be a bit lower so the earnings potential is lower but it’s the profile would be similar to any other Russell Group university in the UK but the location it creates a ceiling for some of our graduates. Thank you. You’ve you’ve covered everybody’s covered a lot of what I was going to ask just want to pick up a couple of little things you talked about the 5,000 students a year going to England I completely completely agree we’re paying for everything until that point and then you kind of lose them to the GB you then said about the numbers I’m just trying to work out some head so there’s 5,000 numbers go across the GB there’s did you say 600 coming from the south in? At the moment we would have a thousand students from the south. Every year? No a thousand in total in total yeah it’s increased so our applications Alistair’s behind me go right to the committee to confirm this uh we would take in about three to four hundred undergrads from the south every year which is significant for us saying we’re taking about three thousand six hundred three thousand yeah and I was working so that’s less than ten percent of the the total that are going to England I was just trying to work so if that came outside of Masson how does how would that then be funded? What would be the how would that how would you see that work if that if it was four or five hundred or whatever was taken out how do you fund? So the model that we use for GB is that the GB students pay the same fee they would pay in and well an English student would say they pay the same fee as they pay in England yeah students coming from the south currently play the same fee as a student from the north okay so and I guess we wouldn’t necessarily want to disturb that but if we left that as it was we would be expecting support from the ROI government to fill that gap. To what to what level? Well it would have to be a similar level to the amount that we would receive per student from from the the Department for Economy here in Northern Ireland so just now we get four thousand seven hundred or thereabouts from the student and then we get say four two or four three whatever from the department and it would have to be a similar level of funding to yeah. So you’re figuratively raising them as a number by stealth? Yeah you’re you’re through the vice-chancellor you’re buying extra student places so this is this is the this is the dichotomy that we face at the moment we want more students from the south that’s a good thing for all of us and we are now in a position for all sorts of reasons where we now record numbers of young people coming south to north yeah if you were saying if you’re having this debate 20 years ago it would be the opposite there was record numbers going north to south but due to cost of living and other factors that’s changed however there is an issue in terms of disparity as Sir Ian’s outlined so what we are asking for is some thinking around this that allows the Irish government for a very small amount of money to support the students coming from our way to the north that they would subvent that the same way as the department does with us so that would be four thousand four thousand two hundred give or take per student and that would allow growth now we do have engagements with the Irish government where they buy they purchase from us 25 medical places because they have an issue around capacity within their doctoral programs for clinicians so we’ve 25 places that are fully funded by the Irish government that are in our medical school that are bought outside of Mason okay so our argument is that we want more students we want more home-based students we need to decouple the ROI situation because the challenge to us and it’s a challenge that we need to recognize from our students and from political representatives is that you’re going GB to Northern Ireland you’re paying nine thousand seven hundred pounds you’re going from Dundalk to Belfast you’re paying four thousand seven hundred pounds and there’s an indicate in this disparity there so that’s an issue we need to address you know I’ve a daughter in in the south and her fees are one thousand something pounds like so that’s the suppose that’s the disparity so the current fee in in the south is two thousand euro it was three but it’s been reduced by about a thousand by by the minister yeah it’s about sixteen hundred pounds yeah no ball listen just uh you’ve you’ve covered quite a bit what I want to pick up on the student rate on child care so you’ve you’ve just uh increased that or taken that away um for for students suppose particularly PhD students we’re talking about economic growth and we’re talking is there a risk there’s a barrier there if you looked at that to some people coming back to to study well we’re still subventing child care by I think three hundred thousand pounds of our own money we put into that um to keep the the cost as low as possible we’re offering discounts for students who are coming back and the number of students affected is under 20 okay four important just to just to pick that up the the important part of that is is you know the the student union and the university um don’t disagree with the the cause of that issue which is a fundamental lack of of funding for what we see as a critical service that the university is providing outside of education and research um the university has had to make a difficult choice there um our issue is around you know how savings are made and that is our job as a as a as a critical friend of the university is to is to interrogate how those decisions are made and how savings are made but for me it just highlights um again another instance of the university being asked to provide a service outside of its normal portfolio and then having to make a difficult decision of of of cutting it and then being left you know sort of facing repercussions for that for for me i’d like to see a scenario where the university can continue to provide these services or they are provided outside of the university’s scope but they’re stepping in to fill a gap that already you know exists yeah no 100 i’m good thank you colleagues um thank you very much indeed um i think the committee will be very keen to follow up with the department in relation to higher education particularly the the review um but obviously the review is going to be a long-term process and it’s not going to provide the short-term answers that that you need um i think it’s completely unacceptable that there’s still been no budget set at this stage so it’ll be in my colleagues capable hands and i can try chair can i just make one more point uh through the vice chancellor if you don’t mind could we ask the committee maybe going back to the vice chancellor’s point about the six percent levy to write to the minister on that in a supportive way because if we’re going to increase or put a levy on international student fees by six percent that will have a detrimental impact on both universities for all the reason outlined around international students subventing the the funding model that we have so we’d appreciate the department’s support on that and also the second issue would be on the republic of ireland issue yes it would be particularly useful to the minister maybe to minister lawless and south to write on that issue as well because we do need a resolution to it and it goes back to sinead’s point about the expansion of mcgee this could be a critical lever in terms of expanding student numbers at mcgee exactly no problem at all thank you all very much indeed thank you okay peter um so members uh content then this committee content to uh write to just qv around the uh number of applicants from the republic of ireland and the actual students because i said they would come back on that and then to the department would be around urging clarity around the budget generally in particular around phe um also um in terms of the higher education panel is the committee then supportive of qb suggestion that should be an international independent sorry independent panel and then additionally the points that were just made about the six percent levy on international students and around the government of the republic of ireland funding um its students coming north coming to northern ireland so that they could then be removed from mazen did that cover what the committee wants to do yeah and just in particularly in relation to the higher education review uh item nine of the department’s end of year progress report stated that uh the review team will be in place by june 2025 we’re now in june 2025 and it’s not in place so we need to get an urgent update from the department where that’s at the minister said that she is expecting to receive the terms of reference um pretty soon or draft terms and that she would uh share that with um the economy committee yeah i’m really concerned that this has really been pushed back we’re going to recess now in another couple of weeks so i mean that you’d expect that that would be coming to us in the next week or two early convenience all right okay okay members content okay item seven members is a update on the positive of the energy efficiency grant scheme and invite forward colleagues uh pleased to welcome back to the the committee dr vicky carol he’s director of innovation research and development at invest northern ireland daniel party energy and resource efficiency manager at invest katrina the head of energy management at the department and ryan white who’s the director of heat buildings department also colleagues thank you very much for coming along really really appreciate it and for all your hard work as always but i’ll hand over to you to make a statement on the on the scheme and ultimately exclusion and on the pathway forward thank you chair and members of the committee good morning and thank you for the opportunity to come and speak to you about the energy and resource efficiency program in particular here we are here to discuss the pause of the energy efficiency capital grant to new applicants whilst we take time to review the first year of its operation my name is ryan white i’m director of heat buildings and climate change from energy group in the department and with me today as you’ve articulated our katrina duddy from the energy management team and invest and i colleagues dr vicky kyle daniel party who manage the delivery on behalf of the department i’ll start by giving a brief background to the development of the program setting this in the context of the strategic policy and legislative landscape and then hand over to invest and i colleagues to make some open remarks relating to operational delivery so far and then welcome questions from members the introduction of the new energy efficiency support scheme for businesses was a commitment of the executive’s energy strategy was published at the end of 2021 this strategy was closely followed by the introduction of climate change legislation for the region which served to further reinforce the need for policy interventions of this kind and this is set in the context of supporting the delivery of a just energy transition for businesses during the scheme development processes process we took a policy decision that rather than to focus solely on energy efficiency the wider energy and resource efficiency program including the introduction of a new capital grant for energy efficiency would be brought together into one business case and one set of approvals to ensure efficiency and program delivery the wider program offers several complementary measures that meant that this approach is a really good strategic fit the wider program offerings for businesses allow them to avail of technical support for energy audits and sustainability reports as precursor precursors to energy and resource efficiency capital grants the department and invest and i have worked in a collaborative and integrated manner throughout the development of the program and this work was taken forward against the backdrop of the independent review of invest and i and energy and broader green economy aspects of policy delivery have been regularly held up as an exemplar in that response to the review with the department invest and i working in partnership and taking an evidence-based approach to all policy decisions during the development process and extensive gap analysis and benchmarking exercise was carried out alongside the review of operational delivery from best in i schemes that operated between 2020 and 2022 the resulting program is operating under the regulatory framework of both state aid and subsidy control whilst also delivering support to both invest and i client organizations and to the wider business space the program has been a good example of operational delivery in a constrained environment and has had a huge level of interest from businesses i’ll now hand over to my colleague vicky to give you an overview of the operational delivery and the next steps in relation to the program dr cal thank you morning morning chair members of the committee and i thank you for me also to be provided with the opportunity to give an update on the energy efficiency capital grant and i will refer to that as ecg as we go forward as rand said i’ll provide you with an overview of the energy and resource efficiency program as well as further detail on the ecg and then we’ll be happy to questions from committee members the energy and resource efficiency program is a key contributor to the invest in i business strategy it supports business under the strategic priority of decarbonization and sustainability the current invest in i business strategy sets out a strategic objective to support 575 investments from net zero energy and resource efficiency technologies the energy and resource efficiency program plays a vital role in terms of delivering that objective the ecg forms one element of the support provided under the energy and resource efficiency program it’s delivered by the energy and resource efficiency teams and invest and daniel heads up that team the overall program was approved by the department for finance in february 2024 and represents 38.34 million of support over a five-year period as ryan said the program includes technical advice sustainability planning and support for capital investments which enable businesses to achieve cost carbon material and energy savings and it should be noted that the wider energy and resource efficiency program continues to operate as normal however due to the exceptional demand for the ecg element this is currently paused for new applications the ecg was a new scheme offering support to northern ireland businesses in their efforts to decarbonize it supports the policy objectives of net zero and contributes to the northern ireland energy strategy to deliver energy savings of 25 from buildings and industry by 2030. the grant supports all businesses to install energy efficiency measures along with low carbon and renewable technologies thereby helping businesses to take control of their energy use lower their energy demand and costs and reduce their energy emissions the ecg is open to businesses that meet eligibility criteria including companies from the wider business base that are new to invest in i support grants of up to 150 000 are available and the rate of support is based upon company size so it’s 30 for large companies 40 for medium-sized companies and 50 for micro and small companies when applying for ecg it’s a two-step process the business first undergoes a business eligibility check and we ensure that the business is eligible and then we look at the project to ensure that the project which they are bringing forward is also eligible and we have all the information we need as custodians of public funds we must administer the funds wisely and undertake due diligence at checks accordingly the scheme opened to inquiries at the april 2024 and it has proven to be very popular with interests well exceeding our initial expectations to date the team have received over 1400 inquiries and they have processed over 98 percent of these at the time of the pause a thousand inquiries we had progressed to either business eligibility or project eligibility the remaining did not progress because either they weren’t eligible for the scheme could have been domestic house users or the applicant had decided to withdraw their expression of interest as they were not in the position to bring forward a project at that particular time reporting statistics are still subject to end of year validation and publication however the scheme indicates a high level of uptake from smas and the demand within the business community for energy and efficiency support is high micro and small businesses make up over 75 of the inquiries received and overall 70 of inquiries came from that wider business base that are not invested in i-clients the grant supports a wide range of energy efficiency technologies such as lighting heating cooling equipment motors and drives however the majority of interest relates to solar pv and that accounts for over 90 of the inquiries received the scheme has been operational for one year and the team have processed offers to the value of five and a half million pounds these offers have directly contributed to invest in i’s regional balance target as outlined by the minister in the sub-regional strategy and around 75 of the offers have been made to businesses outside the belfast metropolitan area in addition micro and small businesses account for over 55 of the offers made a review of the eecg form part of the energy and resource efficiency program business case and that review was stated be triggered at five million in committed expenditure or 12 months of operation and that review is currently underway you’ll note from the written submission that the decision to pause the eecg was proactive ensuring budget integrity and to prevent over commitment the scheme is closely monitored and monthly governance meetings are held between invest ni and the department for the economy based on the scheme progress and budgeting modeling the trajectory of demand from business indicates a budget requirement in excess of the approved amount of capital expenditure for the scheme for this reason a pause was implemented on the 9th of may with the grace period for those businesses at the final stage of application to so that they could submit their application by the 16th of may we understand the businesses at the early stages of the process were disappointed to learn of the pause however the action was necessary to prevent over commitment of budget while the scheme is in pause we will continue to assess submitted project applications and undertake a review to ensure that applications received to date do not exceed the funding allocated and to ensure that it is delivering against the department for the economy’s vision of a greener and more prosperous economy the outcome of the review will guide the next steps relating to eecg and this that will be communicated to all the businesses who are affected by the pause so thank you for listening and we welcome any questions that you have thank you very much dr tell and thank you for engaging with uh with me um during during the process um just first to the department why are investing idea in this scheme and not the department um the delivery of scheme is um underpinned by um the 1999 energy efficiency order um which enables invest tonight to provide financial assistance for energy efficiency okay it’s the most appropriate um legal pathway to do this and the department wouldn’t have been able to do it directly the department would um have had to i suppose procure a service provider in that process and um i guess um our ability to deliver through invest tonight who have a proven track record in this space and have delivered energy efficiency support as far back as 2008 was named the most appropriate option sure and do you believe this is a core function of invest in eyes work um economic development and um the journey towards i suppose a greener and more prosperous economy are underpinned by the minister’s priorities um but also what we can see in in the the economy and i suppose broader global economics is that over 130 countries have now committed to a net zero journey um that makes up over 90 percent of global gdp that is our export market and we truly believe that net zero is a fundamental and core element of the economy going forward it is also a core element of investment business strategy as well okay so what impact has this scheme had on economic development here in northern ireland i suppose um there’s three main things that that energy efficiency will drive in businesses and the first one will be driving down bills the second one will be improving energy security and third one would then be activity in the sector so we’ve seen a really large uptake in areas like solar which has driven i suppose um companies in that space to to you know scale this is about impact this is about scale and i suppose that’s what grant support is is targeting here growth in that area sure and have you been able to put a figure on the economic impact of this game to date no i suppose some of the the value um that we will see through the through the review process will help us understand that a little bit better um the original business case had outline figures for gva etc like that that were around this program um i can’t remember the figures offhand i think it was approaching half a billion um by 2030 so that’s over the five years of the program but um there were elements of that had the budget of how much each year for the program pardon with the budget of how much each year for the program so that the wider program budget is 38 million yeah and over four years there was various modeling scenarios taken forward okay so that will be profiled in various ways over the four years or five years um in terms of the offer so uh offers of five and a half million have been made how much has been accepted those offers have all been accepted we have we’ve drawn down of approximately 17 projects 400 and something thousand pounds um but all of those offers have been accepted it’s a year from the latter of offer for the company to complete the project and then get the claim in so a lot of those offers only went out probably towards the end of the summer so there’s several months left to draw down towards the end of and the last summer sorry so once we launched it in may it took sort of several months to get offers out yes so five and a half million pounds of offers currently out and then how many got through the final process before the pause uh we at the end of the pause so that 115 projects that got through that was and figures for 24 25 so we’re sitting sort of let’s see i think we’ve another 172 still uh still submitted project um which will be turned into offers okay with a total value of how much uh we are estimating about eight million pound but this is based on average figures you know until we actually verify the actual projects and see the valid eligible costs we bring in the total up to eight and a half million or eight and a half plus the five and a half plus the five and a half okay and the budget for this scheme was yeah the capital budget is 16.9 okay um in terms of the average offer made to businesses what would that be the average grant size was 46 000 pounds um and the average project size was 120 000 pounds and then finally just for me in terms of the impact of this scheme so one of the main impacts was to reduce energy bills of those recipients by 25 percent have we any indications of the decisions made of how that has helped or not so as part of the validation project of the projects themselves we are looking at numbers it’s a simple sum is it eligible does it achieve the targets anything it has got through has achieved the targets um when we’ve sort of quantified all of the costs all of the energy and then the potential savings um we’re it’s it’s potentially 14 million kilowatt hours which translate to about 30 percent 30 percent saving in terms of cost and about 40 percent saving in terms of energy and carbon thank you very much jonathan thank you chair um thank you very much for your presentation so far it’s fair to say there there was a lot of excitement and lobbying for a scheme like this to come into like i’ve i’ve talked to many businesses that were were calling for this very scheme um so they can modernize their their their energy practices within their own respective businesses and on the face of things you’ve you’ve presented a very orderly pause um but surely you know was there a grave degree of naivety as to just how popular this scheme would be like to close it just over a year after its inception seems to me like the first thing i would say it’s not closed it’s paused and they are still processing applications at the project application stage so it’s not as though we’re not putting out offers we are we’re still issuing letters of offer after we validated the project in terms of the profiling that was done in relation to the business case there’s no other scheme exactly like this so what we were able to do was take a look at some of the other schemes that had been in existence in terms of say the covid type schemes that were in operation also schemes in other jurisdictions and to be honest if you look at some of the budgets they have obviously it’s a lot more significant than ours this was um a scheme new to northern ireland new in terms of setup and that’s why the review after a year was something that we built into the business case so that we could see how it was actually playing out we could see the uptake we could see the level of demand for it and that would allow us to determine whether or not we needed to to make any changes to the scheme so what forecasting was done in preparation for the scheme what you’ve you received 1400 inquiries what forecasting models stored did it show in terms of what you anticipated that was far in excess of the demand that was anticipated based on the modeling that was done as i said there was no other exact copy that we could take to look at an existing scheme to say what’s what’s the profile that’s going to come from it so what was done was was there was an analysis done gap analysis done in terms of what was needed and then there was uh an investigation and analysis done of other similar schemes but nothing exactly as we have um and what did your modeling suggest the modeling suggests i mean we we are effectively looking at at five times the demand that we thought we would thank you come in on that you know we benchmarked against schemes that are run in south by seai scottish enterprise um we looked across i suppose that the landscape of support out there um we surveyed businesses we interviewed businesses we held workshops with businesses and there was an extensive piece of work done by economists and energy specialists in the space to present that sort of background um information for the case what was the breakdown of applications between large medium and small micro businesses um yeah uh in turn when the inquiries come in obviously some of them may be eligible some of them may not be eligible so we look at that from the perspective of until they’re across the line that that information is a bit furry but in terms of the offers we have made a micro and small businesses accounted for 56 percent of the offers medium was 37 percent and large were only eight percent okay um one thing sort of when we were doing the modeling exercise you know which is a something that we we really wanted to do was bring in the wider business space you know traditionally invest and i don’t have a lot of interaction with the wider business space in various schemes so that in a way could have been an unknown you know we were quite sort of surprised at the scale the amount the number and even the the size of the projects the wider business base were bringing forward to us so would you have an average figure for what a project would cost in each of those three categories i could work it out but yeah i just would be interested to say because for me i seen the the the real purpose of this scheme is really helping with our micro and small businesses who didn’t have the the wherewithal to to revolutionize in terms of some of the energy efficiencies like from lighting for example very basic right up and i was just wondering what the difference was you know could exact for example that eight percent of large businesses in in a sense swallow up a much larger section of the pooling of funding compared to i think the important thing to remember is we capped the projects at 150k yeah for any application a business can also put in three projects within that one application so they could do relatively small projects but they’re combined together so it reduces the processing for the business and the amount of admin they have to do and did you see that happening we did have we did have applications that did have multiple strands in terms of the project in terms of the actual cost per project they can’t give that but i can give a breakdown in terms of micro and small accounted for two million of the 5.5 million um medium two point on large was only 550 000 pounds so um yeah so sort of saying that actually the small companies were doing quite significant size projects okay and finally for me obviously 1400 inquiries you know obviously stage one is an assessment from best and i that that’s quite a bit of engagement did that put significant pressure on the organization to to actually get around all these businesses to evaluate we we had staffing requirements in relation to running the scheme we had two recruitment exercises but the skill set is quite hard to to actually secure so we still have a couple of vacancies in the technical area for this particular scheme but what i would say is that um what takes time is the back and forward communication with the business because they may provide information but there’s then gaps so then you have to go back to try and get the gaps they could wait two months before they come back to give you that information so it’s a the back and forward to get all the information you need to make the evaluation is where the time consumption happens okay and is it fair to say that it’s not lost work so for example we’re at pause uh 1400 inquiries of those 1400 how many were assessed by invest in i for example so in terms of the 1400 a thousand were taken through for to the first eligibility stage the others were either because they weren’t eligible because they were domestic users or the business decided not to of those thousand for example yes there are some that have went on and have been awarded and will be awarded um but of those that aren’t going to be um whenever the project or the if hopefully it’s unpaused is that lost work do we have to start again with those businesses or or do they continue on no we simply well the inquiry is registered through our portal so it’s automatically on our system we then have that list of all 1400 inquirers um if then after we do the assessment so that’s a chapter of the one of the technical advisors you know does this project sound viable does your your business sound viable if so you go to the next stage um once they go to the next stage an application is issued to the company and it’s via our portal so the company have access okay day and night to achieve it it’s all on a system and it’s always tracked okay so despite the pause at the moment it’s just froze at that stage you know once it’s unpaused it opens again and starts exactly where it is you just resume from where you’re not familiar again sir because we’re pushed for time do you have an anticipated date for unpausing we we need to do the evaluation uh and review of the program and then we need to see what we need in terms of additional funding and then go through that process so it until until we actually go through the review i’m hesitant to say a time frame okay thanks um in terms of the economists i mean we’re pushing to get it done as quickly as possible um so we would hope that we would we would have some sort of output within the next three four months okay so you’re thinking you’ll have the review done by september and then you’ll look at a a new budget which will not obviously be able to be set then until the next financial year well there will still be some funds left that will allow us to progress but in terms of actually going beyond the budget that has been allocated we would need to look for additional funds agree and totally support the principles of what you’re trying to achieve and businesses can i just ask you the invest to save program that’s out for public buildings is it linked in any way to this no it’s not linked at all so there’s a separate department with a separate set of officials doing exactly the same piece of work no so and the invest to save fund is focused at the public sector yeah this fund is focused at supporting businesses they’re doing exactly the same thing is what i’m saying absolutely yeah and it’s also stopped it’s stopped due to a lack of budget allocation yeah rather than any sort of approvals or any sort of difficulty with the pipeline approach i’m dealing with a school in my area that is now left with way higher cost because halfway through they’re now got half of the job done and not the rest of the job done so they’ve got the air source heat pumps but not the insulation so the the heat that they’re now generating is just literally going out the walls and windows are we at risk of businesses because you’ve paused are exactly the same boat if it was in three stages you said it was up to three days the the business wouldn’t have started the implementation until they got the letter of offer from ourselves and they wouldn’t have got the letter of offer until after the project eligibility assessment was completed of the application so therefore only those businesses that got the letter of offer were secured the funding and then they would start the project so there’s no one that’s halfway through the process either not that wasn’t paused in the middle of it so if you said they could do in three stages so there’s no point there’s no pause in between those stages in terms of the stages that was for the overall approval but until the business had gone through all of the approval processes they wouldn’t have got the letter of offer and therefore they couldn’t have started the work so there’s no way that they’re paused in the middle they have secured the funds that have secured the support to allow them to deliver on the project that they applied for okay you said a minute ago about the budget coming through so this is budget related as well as follow the money you know if this is a principle that as an executive going to deliver and the money isn’t there then really it’s words rather than actual action is there an issue with budget there’s two separate matters here on the public sector and that is funding related on this side this is about business case financial process and there is an appetite to scale this however we are running close to our current level of approvals in the business case process yeah so you can’t scale it we can go through an amendment of the business case or a new business case okay and then we’re talking about what you said september time then we’ll see that coming yeah and it’s at the same time you’re helping to do the net zero accelerator fund no that is a no longer timeline i believe um there’s a market engagement process going on at the moment and it’s the end of 2026 i believe there’s the timeline for the net zero accelerator and the business case has been done by invest northern ireland for that well business the business case was initially drafted by the strategic investment board yeah but it’s out of date now right well the delivery of the scheme has sort of been handed over to invest in ireland for ownership sure i was just reading your document so a significant delay as an initial outline business case was outdated invest and i have now appointed special resource to carry out a market needs analysis on updated business case so there’s no business case done yet there was a business case but it’s out of date so you’re having to update it okay uh chenit um most of the questions have been answered but in relation to those offers that have been made vicky you said that the the scheme was open to non-invest in a clients can you give me a proportion of those offers that have been made how many of them would be investing in a clients vis-a -vis not um in terms of the inquiry seventy percent were wider business space so only thirty percent we’re investing in clients in terms of offers in terms of offers it’s wider business space 37 percent and client companies 63 percent now the reason of that flip is because there’s two steps invest and i clients go through an ongoing monitoring in terms of finances if a new business engages with us we have to carry that monitoring that’s an extra step that client companies sort of nearly bypass so they’re playing catch up to an extent but we would find that you know it’s now coming back in line with the 70 30 right right itself so so in in relation to the scheme itself what are you doing to support those that have that extra step to do that are not in the system as as you would say already since we since we launched the scheme we have now two people in that are that are experienced client executives from within invest and i and they’re doing that financial analysis checking the business eligibility they’re working with the companies um we’ve streamlined a lot of the process you know in terms of application form with know your customer checks and these are all standard you know checks within invest and i for all schemes um and we’re trying to bring those companies through you know there’s a lot of hand-holding to be honest you know with this scheme should it be technical or business aspects so um we’re bringing those through um and we have sort of improved that and that’s why i was saying we feel we will get back to the 70 30 split towards a wider business i mean in terms of that additional resource as daniel says there are two people helping companies with that initial step in terms of business eligibility assessment okay it’s just really important that there’s an equity in the system you know that it’s not just investing in clients that actually can jump the hoops so and then the other the other point is so we’re looking obviously at the review and the evaluation and we’ve asked about the timescales but based on on what you’ve now learned in this first iteration um how is the department planning to improve uh future demand forecasting uh to avoid um a pause in the scheme um coming forward what plans have you got in place now that you know um the scale of the demand i guess like the review um the reason we built in 5.5 million or 12 months is because we wanted enough data to try and understand this at that sort of depth and like the previous schemes that this was modeled on operated during covid and they were client companies only so we need to understand this profile now that we have we need to understand i suppose what a sustainable budget what a sustainable grant level what a sustainable sort of long-term initiative looks like so that we don’t have to pause this again in the future okay thank you colleagues thank you very much for making yourselves um available and thank you for all the important work that you you continue to do but the committee would be keen once the review is done in september just to be kept up to date of any changes that may or may not be made okay peter so members content to then to write to the department just regarding the economic impact information that the chairperson asked about the average cost uh per micro medium and large company timeline for the review and for the anticipated unimposing um to be kept up to date as the chairperson just said when you’re content content yeah okay members just moving to item 8 then industrial training levy um sl1 refer to the clerk’s cover note of page 113 the department intends to lay a statutory role entitled the industrial training levy construction industry order northern ireland 2025 the subject is sorry the rule will be subject to negative resolution procedure and will likely come into the operation on 31st of august 25 the red enables the construction industry training board in northern ireland to raise funding through a levy on employers in the industry the board is to encourage the adequate training to those employed or intending to be employed in the construction industry in northern ireland it’s funded through a levy which is determined by a percentage 0.5 percent of the payroll costs of employers in the industry employers with earnings less than 800 or sorry the 80 000 are exempt the levy is to be imposed for the period the 1st of september 25 and ending on the 23rd 31st of august 26 and has unchanged from previous years members are they content for the department to make the proposed row can i just declare an interest yet no you had that before when it came last year so no 100 members content agreed members okay correspondence then members item two members are asked to note a copy of the 25 26 departmental business plans the correspondence includes a link to the year update which indicates that in this quarter the department will publish the following a careers action plan a skills action plan an apprenticeship action plan and a cross-border skills initiative a circular economy policy a grid connection policy a good jobs charter consultation an irish language policy and an rhi closure bill the department is also to appoint a further education review team award the project gigabit tender and publish the final design for a renewable electricity support scheme in september it is to develop an mou with counterparts in the republic of ireland in respect of all island economic social and environmental cooperation so members i would encourage you to have a look at the business plan that’s been published um i may be a skeptic that i can’t see all these things um being delivered as as outlined i do think at some stage peter would be useful for the committee to be briefed on the end of year progress um the department has given itself gold or green statuses for things that haven’t progressed so i would be keen to to understand uh the gridding system and how you can award yourself a green rag rating on an aviation policy that hasn’t even started so is that agreed members great okay uh i don’t sorry chair sorry i just want everybody to note uh regarding the state aid rules of quota because there was questions raised uh regarding that and it was a pretty positive response that we received i think they were coming to that correspondence all right sorry it’s up above in there their quota complies with state aid rules as well and number one yes number five sorry yeah so item three members are asked to note a departmental response confirming that four english enhanced investment zones are making use of tax exemptions these are understood to include some of the following stamp duty land building and equipment capital alliances etc as the committee content to note at this stage okay item fours members are asked to note a further departmental response in respect of the department’s disclaimed accounts members content to note yep item five then is in relation to the state aid rules on quota yeah no i’m just saying it’s a pretty positive response in relation to the competition and marketing um authority so i think i would just raise one point um so on page 11 of the report a paragraph 234 the report states that the assessment could have explicitly considered whether the subsidy could impact investment decisions in other airports in northern ireland and if so if there is appropriate mitigations in the subsidy design but apart from that as you say it has been said it has been highlighted the rules in terms of state aid is not for the department they’ve said they’ve handed the money to um jerry city and stravans city council and it’s for them to ensure that they comply with it rather than the department anybody else want to raise anything on that one no okay we’ll then move to item six members are asked to note a response from the committee for infrastructure accepting an invitation to a joint concurrent meeting is the committee content to write to the cfi and explain owing to scheduling clashes the evidence won’t take place as part of the joint current meeting and will still be heard on the 2nd of july yeah great emissions yep item seven members are asked to consider a call for evidence from the assembly executive review committee and respective committee engagement on taking evidence on cross-cutting matters any member wish to raise anything on this members are you content for me to i’ll draft something when you come back and um this is all the joint concurrent meetings and how we do them and maybe we could do them better and we’ll have good stuff so okay uh item eight members are asked to note an invitation to okay that’s already happened so members content to note item eight um item nine members are asked to consider correspondence from the committee for finance and respective united unions campaign members content to write to the department seeking its views thank you item 10 members are asked to consider a motion agreed by the committee for education in respect of the 20 or 14 to 19 provision imposed 19 cent uh do you think peter this would be debated before recess it just might be um so it’s a page 181 um so the committee for education have agreed this motion and what they’re trying to do is the thing that we did before is having a jointly agreed by both committees so yes i would anticipate maybe the very last day the last uh on the the members want to take some time to discuss with their parties are they content at this stage to approve i just want to push members into a decision if they hadn’t had a chance to speak with their colleagues i’m happy enough i imagine all our colleagues on the route on the other committee have already agreed it for us so members can tend to agree then yeah okay that’s great then um item 11 members are asked to note a copy of the esl report members content yep okay uh item 12 again for noting members from the house of lords scrutiny committee content yeah item 13 again for noting from the house of lords scrutiny committee members content yes members are asking to request a brief the chairperson from sse plc are members content that i do that thank you item 15 members are asked to note a copy of the royal irish academy policy report members content to note yeah thank you item 16 members are asked to note a copy of correspondence from a concerned individual members content to note 10 item 17 members are again asked to note multiple correspondence in respect of the theater in chlorine members content to note content no problem at all board work plan peter uh members just to um seek the committee’s agreement if you look at the forward program that on the 2nd of july we would have the national franchise dealers association talk about eu regulations of vehicle emissions and also the qub unions had asked us to come and brief on similar to what we’ve heard today so if you’re content with that the other bit is the insolvency amendment bill um so if you recall the department has briefed us about this there was a consultation bill itself is 121 clauses long longest bill i’ve ever dealt with and four schedules what it’s doing is it’s a lot of stuff around insolvency and director disqualification my understanding is it’s what is currently happening in england and wales and it’s being rolled out to northern ireland and hasn’t happened for various reasons over the last few years because the assembly was dying etc so that’s what they’re going to do that bill is likely to be introduced on the 23rd of june so the idea we get a briefing from the department about it just to remind you next week and the timeline i would suggest you would be expected to be introduced on the 23rd of june i expect the second stage to be on the first of july so you get your briefing next week that cues you up with what you might want to say during second stage i presume it’s going to pass if it’s not and if you have any worries do let me know but if it doesn’t sorry if it does pass um then i what i would suggest is the committee puts down a motion to extend the committee stage at our meeting on the 2nd of july it’s not that i believe the bill is controversial or anything like that it’s just it’s very very long and what we need to do is do a call for evidence over the summer and stakeholders really don’t like that so we would have to run it july august september so that means we then start taking evidence if there is any in october by which stage of the committee stage would have run out so we will extend it to christmas is my suggestion but i would with members cooperation endeavor to get that done and well done before halloween but just in case there is something unexpected that comes back and end the time all right exactly that’s what i think um so that would be the suggestion is that we put down a committee’s agreeable on the 2nd of july after the bill is passed second stage uh the chair will hopefully say any motion to extend to christmas that would then get go to plenary in september we do our call for evidence over the summer in september we then take evidence in october um doing the clause by clause is going to be a wee bit hellish because it’s 121 clauses plus four schedules we’ll have to go through each one of them um um but that will take us a week or two just to do that but if you extend the christmas that’ll be grand we have plenty of time and if any other very interesting policy things come along i mean the department is promising quite a lot before the end of june i anticipate those will materialize actually in the autumn so that’ll give us time to do other interesting things and still finish the bills nice and early which i know the department is keen to do so if members are generally content with that approach um i’ll then uh we’ll have our briefing on the bill next week and i will then bring a motion to you on the 2nd of july seeking an extension to the stage hopefully you find that uncontroversial if you find it controversial good time to say or if not you can tackle me about it afterwards and i can say that all again only uh in english and slower so that’s required i’m content to cut yeah could i ask have any progress been made on a workshop on renewables right we’ll get a uh overview on renewables next week yeah um so that’s just research going to talk to us i’ve been chatting to um renewables northern ireland so steve and i knew about doing a visit um we’re also going to go to the utility regulator in in later in september is it like the 25th of september let me just see when is it it’s yeah it’s sorry it’s the first of october we’re going to the utility regulator who’s going and i’ve said to them members want to talk about renewables um uh so like i said i was also talking to renewable and i about a nice visit i note in the business plan there’s a reference to a community renewable energy project at derry lynn okay who knew right i didn’t either so there might be a visit in there um at some point so uh yeah so i’m alive to that uh thank you which hopefully that will that will satisfy so jefferson okay anything else members any other business ideas can i raise a couple of things yeah just um two two things we had the bma in a roundtable last week and the came up in the discussion about the student loans company and the differential between northern ireland students and gb students who study here or vice versa and it’s be interesting can we ask for them student loans company to commend the kind of answers so there’s a differential between what our students can get from the loans company than our access to then what an english got initial ways student can okay we had a student loan company and before i thought we’d that’s right to them in the first instance yeah yeah yeah okay the second second thing to raise then there was a just for an update on the sectoral action plan there was an action plan about a year ago and it’s just to see where that the sectoral action plan actual action sectoral action plans um yes we had those that issued to us um and where are they now it’s just an update on that okay is that agreed yes great anything else no okay well then we will uh adjourn