Mr. Frank Vaughan:

It is within the competence of the ICTU community sector committee to liaise in that way. That is for bodies related to the trade union movement. We do not pretend to speak and we are not here to speak for others. I have noted our support for the AONTAS position. AONTAS could claim to have some representative capacity for the providers in that sector.

I wish to address Senator O'Donnell's comments. We are in favour of quality and we want to have a good, solid, robust quality assurance system built in. However, we are keen to ensure that providers who have a key role are not marginalised, shoved out or deprived. Ultimately, as we noted in our submission, it might be counterproductive in terms of the financial basis of the QQI model. There are issues of principle at stake. The Senator is quite right to note that there are certain waivers in existence but, as we have heard today, the policy framework adopted provides for the future introduction of fees in other areas which are not even being countenanced at the moment. We are concerned that there are issues of principle that need to be established and we have no wish to prejudice the structure of a system that is serving us well at the moment in terms of the needs of marginalised groups.