Mr. Ned Costello:

Senator Healy Eames raise a large number of interesting issues and I do not know whether I can cover them all. I will ask Mr. Purser to make a specific comment on access in response to the questions from the Chairman and Deputy O'Brien. It is an important issue.

With regard to the linking of funding to job creation targets, the higher education system does not get the credit it should in terms of what the data show, including in Education at a Glance 2012 from the OECD, about the returns to individuals from higher education. We know that the private returns - as in how much a person makes if he or she has a higher education qualification - are high here in an international context. If one has a higher education qualification, one's employment prospects are greater. I have reservations about a direct attempt to create a causal connection between job targets and higher education because that would inevitably lead to short-termism and an instrumentalisation of higher education and the complexities of the labour market are such that it is hard to draw such a direct causal correction. The Government's jobs strategy has targets while the Department of Finance's medium-term forecasts suggest something different. It is difficult to draw a line between a higher education outcome and a job outcome in a strict causal way.