The political act of developing provision for writing in the Irish higher education context

In 2007, when the authors of this chapter were being selected to get Ireland’s first writing centre up and running, concerns about postgraduate writing for publication coincided with national and institutional drives to up-skill the population for participation in a knowledge economy. A feature of our context is that our institution began its life as a National Institute of Higher Education and maintains strong ties with local industry to this day. Student retention and transferable skills development were Higher Education Authority concerns that largely determined some goals for our target groups. Those groups included mature students, international students and students coming in through the Access programme as a consequence of low, or the absence of, Leaving Certification exam scores (http://www. examinations.ie/). The national discourse about writing at third level in Ireland up to that time was largely limited to talk about writing development for professional academic advancement.