Jen Cummins (Dublin South Central, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The Minister had a very late evening yesterday and here he is again, working hard and fresh with his answers. I thank him.

I am delighted to see the move forward in this area. I have four sets of questions. On accommodation, in each university or third-level institution, will there be student accommodation on site? The Minister does not have to tell me all the figure if he does not know now. Will the costs be student costs as opposed to the ridiculous costs for private places? I have mentioned my own constituency of Dublin South-Central loads because that is where private student accommodation is. I understand it is for-profit and so on, but at universities it should not be that way. What would the rough costs be and how many units?

Second, I noticed that the funding for external bodies and subscriptions to international organisations has gone down. That will not affect CERN, will it? I noticed the funding has gone down. The Minister just announced that. I am concerned. Maybe that is in a different one. I do not know but maybe it is not.

I have a question that is a little bit different, and I asked about it in that last meeting here. It is regarding trainee teachers doing PMEs. They are working in schools. Discussions are ongoing with regard to teacher training and the postgraduate master’s in education, that is, teachers learning for a year and then working in schools, and an apprenticeship model for that, which would alleviate the costs to the student. The fees are very high, as I am sure the Minister is aware.

Also, for the schools, with regard to teacher recruitment, it would alleviate what is a huge difficulty at the moment. That is not to replace fully qualified teachers; I am saying it will assist and would provide for a certain number. Could the Minister's Department maybe discuss with the HEA how to progress that model?

As for my final question, I am sure the Minister is aware of the protest at the moment outside Leinster House. They are the adult educators who have had new contracts issued to them by the ETBs. There is a challenge, and I have been contacted by many of those adult educators. In my previous role, I worked on the school completion programme, as the Minister may know. We were based in an adult education service in Ballymun. For a number of years I have had a lot to do with adult educators. My husband is also an adult educator. They are concerned that these people who have had contracts under the four years have been given these contracts and are now being told they have to apply for their own jobs in an open competition, that they may have no work in September and that their hours are being cut from what they were previous to that employment. That is being communicated to them. This is not just one ETB; it is several. I have concern for the teachers or the educators, as they are now called, but I also have huge concerns for the learners. People who return to adult education are often people who have been failed by the system at primary and secondary and they are back learning and it takes a huge amount of guts to go back to learn as an adult. Those are to be targeted as courses not running next year because there is not the funding model, yet I note from the budget here that there is an increase in budget to SOLAS and to further and higher education. How does that marry together? I appreciate the Minister's answers.