Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the witnesses on their presentation today and how they teased through the issue. There is considerably more behind the scenes than people might see in a headline discussion. It was worthwhile and we will discuss it with Ministers also. It is about prioritisation and matching resources with the demand. In all areas the institutions have adapted to give students a choice to move quickly into an area, to specialise early or to take a longer route. I also compliment them on their daytime and night-time courses. We need to have flexibility on course choice and method of studying.

I have a view on student dropout. Given the pressures coming out of second level, there is not enough time spent preparing students to adapt to third level education. It is a completely different world in terms of what they are supposed to do and taking on responsibility for themselves. We should probably make greater use of summer holidays to get people ready. They should have more career courses and spend more time abroad in certain areas. They should spend more time in fourth and fifth year before the final push on the leaving certificate. It is clear there is a big difference between leaving second level in June and arriving in third level in September, and not enough is done on preparing them for that. We might engage with the witnesses on that topic in future.

I thank the witnesses for attending and I believe the meeting was very worthwhile. What we discussed feeds into the report by Senator Clune. We hope to have a rolling report every six or seven months and we will also engage with the Minister next week.