Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The point I was making about the annual debate and pensions and the like was that it seems to me peculiar that we went through a period of austerity and then a period of significant economic growth, and many areas saw improvements and upticks in terms of supports, grants, reductions in Government charges, yet this area did not. Up until the previous budget the grants did not increase, and up until now we have not talked about reducing registration fees. That is wrong. I do not know whether it is a subconscious ageism within our political system but it is stupid and short-termist in terms of investing in human capital. We talk a lot about investing in capital, but investing in human capital is so important. Every other measure that was brought in during the austerity era seems to have been eased or improved but the grants did not increase and the registration fees stayed up. That is not passing the buck. We were in government. This is a genuine and honest discussion about how we must have a much more policy-focused approach to the cost of education and investment in education, which needs to happen annually. Education cannot be the poor relation in any discussion. To be fair to this Government, I believe we have applied, from the Taoiseach down, a level of focus to these issues.

The Deputy specifically referred to the technological university of the south east and to research and research time for staff, which is a core piece. If our new technological universities are to succeed, which they will and we want them to succeed, the work we are doing with the OECD around a new academic contract is key. We expect to bottom-out that work this year in our engagement with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the like. I hope to be in a position to start talking publicly about this matter in more detail shortly. It is a really key moment. It is not about imposing contracts or anything like that but more about offering, after a period of consultation and engagement, new contracts to people to work in a new way that is reflective of being in a university, which I believe could be very exiting and transformational for the sector and probably for some of the people whom the Deputy and the Minister of State, Deputy Smyth, met.

Deputy Ó Cathasaigh is entirely correct in what he said about universal versus targeted in terms of the cost of education, and I could not agree more. I argue that, as a Government, we tend to do both. The Minister for Health brought a proposal to Government recently that recommended the removal of the cost of hospital care for children. He did not bring a proposal suggesting an increase in the income threshold and giving medical cards to more children. We as a Government made a decision, in line with the idea that we should have a universal healthcare system, that every child should be able to access healthcare without paying. We did not decide just to tweak the income thresholds for the medical card. We did not say we would just improve a financial grant for some. We decided that as we value our kids' health, then healthcare was going to be free for everybody. That is an example and there are other measures we take in health that are targeted. It is never either-or when it comes to universal and targeted and it annoys me when people - I do not mean the Deputy because he did not do so - try to make the debate binary, because it never is.

On energy, and the Deputy and his party, along with the Minister, Deputy Ryan, have led on the issue, we have done targeted measures on the fuel allowance and we have done universal measures on the energy credit. Why would education be any different? We obviously need to target proactively those most in need. There is no doubt in the wide earthly world that we are already doing so, with €42 million spent on targeted measures from what we call the Programme for Access to Higher Education, PATH, initiatives, which include bursaries of €5,000 to increase diversity among teachers and increasing the SUSI grant, which is a targeted measure. However, we must recognise also that if a person has two children going to college at the same time and each is doing a four-year degree, it will cost that person €24,000 in registration fees. I believe that would have cost about €1,500 in 1997.

It has to be about where we want to get to, and I do not want to dodge that question in any way, shape or form. The good news about the work the European Commission did is this will bring us to the average level of spending in Europe. This will fund our university system roughly to the same level as the Swedish.

We will go from being below average to being in line. I can get the Deputy more details on that.