Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Senator Power raised a question about the Erasmus programme. In general, I would love to see increased participation in the programme and it is one issue I personally want to try to raise in the forthcoming year. As the Senator is aware from her own previous experience, the original intention was to improve mobility of students within the European space and in so doing, to enhance a sense of cultural understanding, mutual respect and affinity within that activity. From a linguistic point of view, I note that at a recent third level fair held in the RDS for incoming students into the third level sector, the European Commission had at its stand young Irish students in their late teens and early 20s who had participated in the Erasmus programme. I spoke to three young women who had spent their Erasmus year in Leipzig and when I asked them how they had got on with their German, they replied the courses were not in German at all but were all in English.

To a certain extent, it defeats the object of the exercise. Ideally, to get to the sort of skills level we are looking at in other sectors of the education agenda for third level students, it would be for somebody who typically is studying engineering and might have done German in school. They would do an Erasmus year in Germany where they could perfect their linguistic fluency, as well as their engineering skills.

The reality now, however - given that, in comparative terms, we have an exploding student population at third level, compared to others - is that, for example, it is extremely difficult to qualify to do physiotherapy in an Irish college due to the short number of places. In Maastricht, a student can do a physiotherapy qualification, in English, which is recognised at European level, for a fee of €1,700. Quite a number of continental universities are offering courses in English.