Fiona O'Loughlin (Kildare South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Professor Barry. He certainly made an excellent case and did a good job in outlining the challenges the university sector faces, of which we are all very conscious. The other presidents will have an opportunity to respond to some of the points that were made and to questions from committee members.

Increasing access to university for socially disadvantaged groups has to continue to be a priority from the point of view of funding. Would Professor Barry accept that the introduction of student loans could act as a deterrent to these particular students? Low-income families may be very apprehensive about their children taking out significant loans and about the potential impact later in their lives. Professor Barry is right to say that capital investment has been seriously depleted since 2008 and this is a huge challenge for all universities. He referred to universities having capital investment challenges which had been scaled at €5.5 billion over 15 years. Can he expand on that and outline the key proposed areas for investment, as well as the anticipated outputs for such investment?

The professor also spoke of the internationalisation of education, the cultural and geopolitical benefits and how it is an important source of income. How does the teaching of English as a foreign language come into play and what is the possible impact of Brexit on the international dimension? I understand that some 20,000 students went to England on the ERASMUS programme. Is it possible that those students could come to our universities? What are the challenges that would give rise to?

Professor Barry mentioned the surplus in the training and levy fund and suggested that it could be used in higher education. This committee has a remit over training and skills and if we were to recommend that this surplus went to higher education it would mean less would go to further education and to training and skills. Is there a way both sectors could develop joint schemes or joint proposals in this area? Does the professor have any strategy for providing online courses for the purposes of lifelong learning? These exist to a greater extent in other sectors. A group from the institutes of further education will be before us next and they have given us current figures for mature students, student-academic staff ratios and core staffing levels. It would be interesting to see the figures from the universities sector.

The professor mentioned other supports such as student accommodation which, although we are not addressing it here, is a huge crisis. On-campus student accommodation is key as it ensures students are not competing with other demands on the housing market.

A key point for this committee is building public support for the argument because education is in a competitive world and there is an onus on us to look after primary level education and second level education as well. Building public support for one's argument is vitally important. I was at Tom Boland's lecture last night, as I am sure many here were, and he made interesting points around balancing autonomy and accountability in the third level sector. This will be hugely important as we go forward because in the past there has been a mismatch between those two things.