Mr. Ned Costello:

Yes. I will respond to a few of the other issues raised, one or two of which were raised by the Chairman.

On the staff fees issue, it only exists as a result of a provision that was put into the 1997 Act in terms of the pre-existing rights and benefits but obviously the cohort who benefit from that is a dwindling cohort and it will disappear eventually; there are caps on it in many cases in the institutions.

I will address a few of the issues raised by Senator Healy Eames. On the question as to the reason the cost is X in a university when a private provider can do it for Y, there is a technical difference between the unit of resource per student number in our submission and the full economic cost of a particular subject. To make it clear, the full economic cost of a subject varies by discipline. An arts subject is quite a bit cheaper than a laboratory based subject, for example. An arts subject would be closer to the €6,000 to €7,000 full economic cost.