00:00 Look, I was recently at Queens where I actually had studied myself for a period of time and
00:04 I was with our spokesperson in relation to further and higher education, Pádraig Dillardy,
00:08 and we met with Queens Management, we met with students and it was part of the refreshers
00:14 fair as well and we met with a lot of students in that sense as well.
00:16 But another group that we met that I actually thought was very interesting was the Secondary
00:20 Students Union and they really wanted to highlight this issue of the fact that it can be so difficult
00:27 for students from the north to study in the south.
00:31 I think it's really welcome that that group has come together and I'm really looking forward
00:35 to what they're going to propose come the end of the year.
00:39 But that whole issue, we don't live in a place at the moment where most students do for A-level
00:46 subjects, that's just not a reality.
00:48 And not only is it the four A-levels but then the fact the extra bonus points in maths,
00:52 so most students obviously if they're not planning to study maths they're not going
00:55 to be doing maths for A-levels.
00:56 So I think that's really important, I'm really looking forward to see what comes out of that
01:00 and so hopefully it'll be something that'll be workable and helpful.
01:03 Yeah, me too and I'm really looking forward to meeting the secondary schools group from
01:08 Northern Ireland as well who reached out to me today and I'm very happy to meet them in
01:11 the coming weeks and keep in touch with you in relation to that as well.
01:17 This just needs to be fixed, I mean the two systems don't seem to understand each other
01:21 but that's not a reason not to find a workaround and a way to fix this.
01:25 There has been huge progress made and I thank the universities for this and I thank UU and
01:30 Queen's in particular with the ring fence places for students from here to go to the
01:34 north and to be able to study medicine from next year, to be able to study nursing from
01:38 this year, to be able to study therapies from this year, that's real progress that the universities
01:42 have delivered.
01:43 We need to now return the favour and we need to make sure that we can do the same here
01:47 for students from the north and there's no doubt in my mind we have very many great brains
01:51 working in the higher education system, we bring them all together through Universities
01:54 Ireland, come up with an ask and a practical recommendation and let's try to get this done
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