Dr Paul Davis

And we've got to start prioritising it.

When you look at the cost of energy and you look at the rising costs that are impacting, but also the decrease in income coming into universities, some decisions will be made.

The question is, will we wait until we have to make these decisions in September, October to the detriment of the learning?

or will we start planning for that learning now?

And that's the real point of the debate here, is at least let's have a debate on it.

Let's raise it.

Because at this point in every academic's career, as we look at where we are in the cycle, we're starting to finish up this year, but starting to plan for next year.

And as we start to plan for next year,

then we need to take account of maybe different ways of learning and different ways of doing things.

I think they're already there.

I think the reality is that educational institutions are already suffering cash flow crisis.

There's a number of them already under the HEA auspices of managing their finances because of pure management before.

The increase in energy costs is substantive for most colleges because of the number of buildings that they have to heat.

And we can kid ourselves and say that that won't threaten things, but it does.

If you add that to the crisis of...

student numbers dropping away at postgraduate, which we have a high dependency upon most colleges again.

And you've got to look at the income that comes in from an international student versus an Irish student.

It's twice the income.

So if you're losing students at 20,000 euros, you know, 100 students is starting to add up to 2 million.

That is directly impacting your cost base of running the institution.