Joanna Tuffy (Dublin Mid West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Was the intention not to stop the phenomenon of certain courses becoming more exclusive? I went to Trinity College, for example, and at that time arts was split into different courses such as English and history. Since I left, new courses such as politics and French have been introduced. The effect of that was to make those courses exclusive, with higher points requirements, because there were only 12 places in a course such as law and German. My understanding was that the intention of generic-entry courses such as arts was to prevent certain courses from becoming high-end or elitist, and that after doing a general course, people could then specialise if they so wished.