Dee Ryan (Fianna Fail)

I thank the Minister for his time. I welcome his statement and appreciate that he has given us the time to have this discussion with him and to gain a sense of his broad goals for his term in office. They are wonderful high-level goals and I not disagree with any of them. I particularly welcome his approach to research and innovation and his recognition of the critical importance that this has on our economic development. He is linking this with the Mario Draghi report, which is exactly where we need to be on that space, while recognising our universities and research as a key economic driver for us.

Like the Minister, I have been consulting with students, families, constituents in County Limerick and councillors throughout the country to get a sense of the broad themes that are coming back in this area. I broadly group them into concerns from a learner perspective and from an institutional perspective. I will start with the learner perspective by recognising that it is our students who we should always put first in terms of our higher education institutions. I recognise that the Minister had consultation with students earlier this year in April and that is going to feed into his options paper for the summer. The key issue that he touched on is student accommodation. Whether it was in Sligo, Athlone, Limerick, Tralee or Cork, there was a recognition of a shortage of suitable quality and affordable accommodation for our students. From a councillor perspective, there was confusion around where the local authority's role intersects with the institute's role in this space. I ask the Minister to tell us a little more about the student accommodation strategy that he is planning on bringing forward.

Specifically, will it just be the education institution tasked with bringing forward that accommodation or is there a role for our local authorities or other agencies in delivering that accommodation?

From a learner perspective, there are affordability issues. In addition to a general increase in the cost of living and challenges around rent, the lack of affordable accommodation and the cost of commuting, there are issues with regard to registration fees specifically. I know they are due to change this year. I wish to get the Minister’s thoughts on them, although I appreciate they are not finalised as of yet.

While there is great appreciation for the SUSI grant from those who are able to avail of it, there are some frustrations around the operation and application of it. A number of people have raised queries with me about how we can improve the operation of the SUSI grant, particularly the application process itself. Could it be linked with Revenue in order to make it less onerous on the various family members to gather their information for inputting into the application? I will leave those question with the Minister for now.