Mr. Glenn Fitzpatrick:

I refer to Senator Averil Power's comment on student representation. That was the crux of what we were trying to hit home in our submission. Process, policy, procedure and legislation should be included to account for the worst case scenario and prevent it from happening.

The difference is night and day between a representative of a students' union elected to a committee and a student who may have been taken in from the corridor 15 minutes beforehand but not given an explanation as to why this had happened. At a very low level there is a difference between a class representative sitting on a programme board and feeding in to quality mechanisms who has been trained by a students' union in how to relay information on behalf of the class and somebody who may have been taken in a few minutes beforehand. Unfortunately, such incidents happen. I get a cold shiver up my spine when I hear about colleges holding separate elections to positions, the holders of which do not sit on governing bodies. This undermines the ability of a students' union to claim it fully represents the students. That is the crux of our submission. The ethos of an independent students' union should be enshrined in order that it can fully represent students.

It would be remiss of me not to raise the issue of funding. We need to talk about Higher Education, a paper released by the Nevin Economic Research Institute, is a good starting point for this conversation. Society may have lost sight of what higher education is supposed to be about with regard to having a value system; perhaps this is why it has been undervalued in recent years. Perhaps we are putting the cart before the horse in discussing new and fantastic ideas without having the resources to implement them. The USI believes higher education is a public good, that the money for it should come directly through the Exchequer and that there should be no financial barriers whatsoever to education.

The students' unions in IT Tallaght, Blanchardstown and the DIT will hold a student-led conference on technological universities on 14 May. We will issue invites to members of the committee and hope to see them there.