Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 20 July 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills

General Scheme of the Higher Education Authority Bill 2021: Discussion (Resumed)

Photo of Rose Conway-WalshRose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This is a very useful session. I want to frame this in a way that we want this legislation to do what it needs to do. We welcome it but we need to work together and we need collaboration and inclusiveness to address what we need to address. We need joined up thinking. Mr. Conlon referred to access. Basically, we all want equality of access. Consider situations such as the student nurses.

We need to have this joined up. We cannot have this legislation and then to be parked over here doing this, as it were. Last year, more than 5,000 students put nursing or midwifery as a first preference on CAO applications. We then see the numbers have been capped, and have been since 2017, at 819 places. We now have the new private course starting on 20 July at a cost of €7,995 annually. The joint committee can see the point I am making about a whole cohort where the candidates chosen are the ones who can afford it. We should not be in that situation where we are capping and not funding the places within the colleges themselves. I ask that that be looked at in the round in terms of quotas and the privatisation that is creeping in there.

I also ask Ms Kenny about the timeline in how she sees this issue as I am very mindful we will have the Cassells report which was certainly to be back from Europe by March. We are now in July and we are being told that it will be autumn now. I am aware the report is back in the Department now but it is important we do not ignore the chronic underfunding when it comes to underpinning what we are trying to achieve here across the board.

I ask Ms Kenny to deal with the timeline issue, the issue of public versus private courses, and the capping of equality of access to places, please. I thank the Chairman for allowing me to contribute again.

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