Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

We have had a very useful session and covered a lot of ground. I had a list of questions written down but other committee members have raised many of them already.

I am surprised by the figure that 173 people from the North are coming here to do level 8 courses, whatever about travel in the other direction. We talk about asymmetric flows. When one uses the word "flow" of course one thinks of liquid but we are asking water to flow uphill. The fact of the matter is that the gradient is such that it is easier, in an educational sense, to travel from North to South than from South to North. Hearing about someone receiving a preliminary acceptance from Newcastle and then the offer of accommodation coming in the door made me wonder whether we need to do the intergenerational stress bomb - the leaving certificate - followed by the scramble for accommodation once the CAO results come out. That is not an issue that any of us here are going to solve.

Having this overview allows us to see the strengths of our own system. Having students do seven leaving certificate subjects means they do not cut themselves off from choices as early in their educational career. Mr. Purser said that from a philosophical point of view, people should study languages and I share that perspective. He also mentioned that studying higher level mathematics is a very strong predictor of economic success in later life. I am glad that we have a system that allows people to keep their options open until later in their academic career but, surely to God, we can get university places open to them in a more timely manner, whatever about the accommodation issue, which we know is an ongoing challenge for the Government.

I will return to a specific issue raised in the earlier session. Perhaps the witnesses will speak to it from the point of view of their own institutions. I refer to this business of diagnosable learning difficulties and how people who move jurisdictions must do the paperwork again. Let us say a student from the North decides to travel to the Republic to undertake a university education. Can he or she access services based on a diagnosis given in a different jurisdiction? Does that impediment exist? I have spoken about dyslexia in the context of my own family. It is certainly not the case that people can suddenly spell better when they travel from the North to the South. The system should be interoperable. Is there a specific provision in that regard?