Paul Daly (Fianna Fail)

It is probably a little-known fact that by qualification I am a teacher, albeit my 30th anniversary of walking out of the classroom and never going back was last week. It was the end of term 1995. However, I have stayed actively involved and I am delighted to be on this committee. I am chair of the board of management of a secondary school with 600 pupils and a former chair of Longford Westmeath ETB. I have kept in touch with the sector, albeit my life took a turn that took me away from it as a profession.

I apologise. I was at the same meeting as Deputy Smith, so I might have missed some of stuff at the start. I will not go into a lot of detail here. I know we will be back on specific issues ongoing.

I wish the Minister the best of luck in his role and congratulate him on his appointment.

As the Minister is aware, I was elected to the agricultural panel so I specialise in agriculture. I will put that hat on here for a minute and bring in what is the forgotten higher education sector, namely, agricultural colleges. It is a third-level qualification. Could the Minister comment on his role? Sometimes it falls between the cracks because once agriculture is mentioned, people go to Agriculture House or Teagasc. It is higher education and it is a third-level qualification. I know the Minister has a role to play. Could he elaborate on his role? It is something I will raise with him in more specific detail.

The next issue is a bugbear of mine. In his opening statement, the Minister talks about his engagement with students on reducing costs. I have met a lot of third-level students over the past couple of years. One meets them during the week and they say "Oh no college today", "Oh no I've only one lecture today" or "Oh no I've nothing today. I had one lecture yesterday. I've one tomorrow". I know there would be a lot of logistical changes in terms of the timetable and staffing but the Minister would be some hero if he could reduce the costs for some families by 25% in fell swoop. I have no doubt based on the timetables students have shared with me that there are four-year courses that could easily be done in three years without burdening anybody and without burnout or putting pressure on students. This would be a 25% reduction in the cost of accommodation and the students could be in the workforce one year earlier. This is something that needs to be looked seriously with the institutions. I get the issues about timetabling and staffing that would probably be raised as reasons it could not be done. It would not work with every course. I know there are courses where there are not enough hours in the day but from what I am hearing, there are a lot of courses that could be done in three years that are taking four.

The other thing I always think third-level institutions could do to help with the accommodation issue involves dedicated organised transport with the private sector. They could sit down and draw up a plan on where students are. Fifty miles in the morning does not compare to what students pay in rent. A circle or radius should be done along with a dedicated plan to see how it would work. It should at least be trialled. I am in Westmeath. Athlone is unique in that one could do a 20-km circle around it and have almost half the country covered. I know it might not work in the same way with places in extremities. I will leave it at that because it is the Minister I want to hear today not myself.