Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank all the witnesses for their enlightening contributions. They are a credit to their institutions and, indeed, to their families and communities which have supported them. I was fortunate to have visited the Irish consulate in Boston three years ago. There I met two recently graduated law students who were working as interns and enjoying the experience immensely. One of them had just graduated from UCD and the other from a public college in Boston. The student from UCD was debt free but the student from Boston had a debt of $120,000 attached to her education. That night, I reflected on the argument and debate we were bound to have in this country on how we fund third level education. I made the decision that neither of the two outcomes I encountered at the consulate were sustainable or acceptable. It was not acceptable that a young person would be burdened with $120,000 of debt but neither could another young person, with probably a better law qualification, walk out of a third level institution with no debt. Three years on, the Cassells report has arrived at a similar conclusion.

Ms Jane Hayes-Nally’s contribution was excellent. I am an advocate of the student’s voice in education. It has been suppressed for too long and we need to hear more from Ms Jane Hayes-Nally and people like her who have legitimate views in how we support them in educating themselves.

I am primarily an idealist. Over my desk in Loughrea, I have a quote from Bill Moyers, a wonderful journalist in the US, "Ideas are great arrows, but there has to be a bow. And politics is the bow of idealism". After 13 years in politics, one has to temper one’s idealism somewhat as one gets older. There was a wonderful contrast between the witnesses’ perfectly idealistic view of how we should fund education, which I support, and that of Mrs. Justice Catherine McGuinness, who would claim she has an equally idealistic view. Life has taught us we have to be pragmatic about this as well. One of the main recommendations of the Cassells report is that there should be some kind of loan for third level education. Instead of having a blanket obstructionist view to this, young people’s time would be far better spent explaining how they feel a loan scheme should operate. They should point to what has gone wrong with such schemes in other countries and use that experience productively to ensure all contemplating going down the route of third level will not feel they do not have the option of pursuing it in Ireland. Ireland has one of the best education systems in the world. There is a whole cohort of families who are just above the income limit for the grant system but do not have the resources to put three young people through college. For me, that is the cohort I want to ensure does not contemplate not pursuing a third level course. Instead, I want us to create a system which supports them. We would all use our energies more productively if we were to go down that route.