Mr. Jim Miley:

Obviously the cost of going to college is not just confined to the cost of the registration fees but also the cost of accommodation and other ancillary fees that are more substantial, particularly for those who are going to colleges or universities outside their home area.

On the framing of the SUSI grants, there are political issues around how one would address that. The association would look at it in terms of cost. The cost of what the student is earning needs to be factored into it. The cost of producing a medical graduate in terms of annual fees is many multiples of the €3,000 registration fee. If one looks at a whole range of disciplines, such as engineering, veterinary medicine, the cost of producing the graduates is dramatically greater and yet the lifetime earnings are substantially greater in the long term.

If one applies the principle of fairness, one would have to say there needs to be some rebalancing on that. There are pragmatic difficulties in getting public support for some of those issues, but if we bring it back to the question of open access and ask whether it is fair that 100% of students in one secondary school in a particular postcode area have access to third level while at present as low as 10% of the leaving certificate students in another postcode area access third level, even though we know that there is no such gap in their potential and academic capacity, we as a society need to address that issue. There is a difficult political challenge in that but the universities are very open to having a very honest discussion with Government on how best to tackle that issue. I do not think we have had that proper debate since the Cassells report has been published.