Mr. Jim Miley:

On the question of the impact of Covid, I do not have up-to-date data, but the two main areas of pressure arose from the reduction in international student fee income and in the commercial revenues from the various activities our members are involved in, from the Book of Kells down the road from here to the Helix, and members will be aware of the various facilities that have a commercial or a part-commercial component. In the first year of the pandemic, both of those were badly hit. In the past year, international student revenue has recovered to a significant extent. It is not fully recovered but to a large extent it has. Over the past year, however, commercial revenues have not recovered at all for obvious reasons. They have been entirely closed. For some individual institutions this amounts to loss of funds in double figure millions of euro. The concern, as with all commercial event-based facilities, is that there will not be an instant recovery on that. It will be a gradual recovery and it will take some time.

The Senator mentioned borrowings. The borrowings of seven of our members that are currently enabled to borrow is currently reaching €1 billion. A number of those borrowings are locked into low exchange rates, but as is the nature of borrowings, there is a rolling renewal of loans. In the context of potential rate rises and an inflationary environment, the repayment on those loans certainly will not go down and is likely to increase in the coming years. Some of our institutions are nearing the end of the borrowing capacity, which is upwards of 40% of their annual income rating. There is a risk that they will not be able to borrow further.

The last point to address is the student registration fee reduction issue. In the Oireachtas last autumn the Minister confirmed that a €1,000 reduction in the student contribution would have a net cost to the State of €81 million. That would be €250 million if the student fee was entirely eliminated. I made the point in our submission that standstill is not an option. If there is an existing black hole in the funding of the sector of some hundreds of millions of euro - and I am aware that perhaps there is an argument to be had about the full extent of that but it is some hundreds of millions of euro - and if the starting point is to increase that hole by a further €100 million with even a €1,000 reduction in the student contribution, then the position is, as the Senator has outlined, that it must be replaced by State funding. If that were not to happen then we are into significant quality issues. We already have student staff ratio issues that have risen from 20:1. The latest OECD report shows that this is now 23:1 in Ireland versus 15:1 or 16:1 across the OECD. There will be further pressure, and ultimately, the quality of what we offer to students will be diminished.