Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their time today. I will start with Mr. Donohoe. He said that business is also willing to play its part. Does that acknowledge it is not fully playing its part? Is IBEC open to an increase in the national training fund levy that will be ring fenced for higher education? Is the Irish Farmers' Association in favour of income contingent loans, which means the children of farmers would have to pay? To date, many of them have not. I am very open to looking at the fact that 40% of farmers' children are on maintenance grants and whether they should all be on maintenance grants. We have a strange situation where we have mature students who are being assessed on their parents' income when they do not even live with their parents yet capital and assets of farmers is not taken into account when their children seek to go to education. Somehow we have failed for a very long time to look at that. How many of the farmers' families are not in a position to pay? As we have so many politicians from outside of Dublin, we are sometimes afraid to look at the access of farmers and their children to education. It is a conversation we need to have.

There was one comment by Mr. Donohoe on free fees. Something we have not explored is that one in seven children from disadvantaged backgrounds went back into education. That figure does not take account of the number of mature students from those backgrounds who went back into education. When we say one in seven individuals, the research has failed to capture that it is actually one in seven families. It filters out over time. Among my peers and in my community, where a parent went back to education through the free fees system, their children are now just old enough to enter into the education system. They will enter it because their parents or elder sibling had that access. We have not even begun to account for the ripple effect on the children who are just now of age to go to college. There is a generational change from when it was first introduced. Sometimes it is not useful to look at how much free fees has or has not failed. It has had an impact but we have not given it long enough. We must consider the social and cultural capital and have a more three-pronged approach to access to education.