Ms Moira Leydon:

I am not sure whether I understand the policy the Senator is proposing but certainly my instinctive or political reaction is that many graduates are leaving Ireland because of the socioeconomic situation. Graduates tend to be young people. They cannot get homes. We have a crisis of supply and affordability and therefore emigration is exerting a pull. Over the generational cycle we see it operating in a defined sense. There has been discussion in the media recently about the number of health graduates emigrating. It is a complex issue. We need to know more about why they are emigrating. Why are conditions in our health service seen as so unattractive that they lead people to decide to emigrate?

We have not given sufficient support to the national plan for equity of access to higher education which is now in its second iteration.

We tend to base our projections for entering into higher education on school leavers but as a society, particularly for the human sciences like the therapies, health, social services etc., we need to see how we can encourage more workers who have experiential knowledge of problems in real-life settings to go into further learning, particularly at higher education level. It is very expensive, particularly if you are not earning and have a family to raise. While I would perceive there being a problem out there, we need to see what are the pull factors, including those of other economies and jobs, and what we can do as a society to make sure we get more people into these jobs. The Minister, Deputy Harris, made a successful pitch recently - he said we should stop looking at school leavers going into third-level education as a solution to all of the skills problems in this country. We need to start thinking about other post-school destinations in order that people have a spectrum of skills and life experiences and can then, if they wish and have sufficient financial security to do so, move on to third level. That is my trade union reaction to the question.