Ms Patricia King:

The Chairman asked particularly about where the money would come from.

ICTU is very much of view that it should be a State-funded system. Regardless of what way we look at this and regardless of how many newspapers set out details of feeder schools and all that information, which highlights the inequality in the system, we will not resolve the inequities until we give everybody the same chance. That is the holy all of it. One gains experience of these matters over the course of one's life. I did not have the income to go to university and I know what that felt like.

On the matter of what farm households' assets are taken into account in the awarding of grants, and some people know what is involved in filling out a means-tested grant application, there are no questions about what assets a certain part of the community has or do not have. If people have nothing it is very hard to get to third level and those people are denied access. Another group of people at least have a filter which means they do not have the same denial of access. There are farmers who are in low income categories and they should be treated no differently from others who are in low income categories. We would not argue otherwise.

If we reflect on secondary education, which to some degree, was fee paying for a considerable period in the sense that it was either done through fee or scholarship, when access to it was opened up, the vast majority of young people received a second level education. That was a major move. Some people with whom I went to national school had one place to go after it - I was not one of them - and that was into the local factory because they could not afford all the costs that were involved in going to secondary school. That is precisely where we are at in university terms. There are categories of young people whose parents, having regard to their household income, could not contemplate the notion of sending their children to university because of all the costs involved in that.

I have children who have been to university and I was lucky enough to earn a living to be able to provide that level of support. I know the costs involved in providing that. It is not a question of guessing any of this. I know what the denial of access to third level based on income means and I also know the cost levels involved. There are groups of students in secondary schools today who, as long as those barriers to access are in place, will never have access to third level, nor even the prospect of it, until we address those barriers.

The Chairman asked me where we would get the money to fund the system. I can think of €620 million that could be immediately got and put into the system, which would be a major injection of capital. We give our thriving, profitable big business accommodation and food sector a reduced VAT rate which denies this State €620 million a year. I am referring to global companies which pay the lowest of wages and which get this valuable reduced tax rate. What sort of transformation would we make to society and to the lives of young people sitting in classrooms in different parts of the country today if the State were able to say that it would not give that sector that tax reduction but would put that €620 million into the education system and thereby allow these young people equal access to university? We should not build our third level education system, which is extremely important to young people to give them a chance in life, on the basis that they should get a loan and sure they may not have to pay it back. That is a desperately bad foundation. I disagree entirely with IBEC.

The business sector here is well capable of paying much more than it pays. It gets a big benefit from having very well-educated people. There is an incentive for those in that sector to invest in third level. If they were to build up that resource as part of an investment in third level, the likelihood is that they would encourage people to stay here rather people having to leave the country. There is a big element in that. Many business people will say there are a few impediments very live in the economy. One of them is maintaining the skills, another is maintaining women, in particular, with their skills in the workforce because of the lack of child care, and another is the unavailability of housing. Education is a key element in that. We have to make a seismic decision. We view the Cassells report very positively. It sets out the options in a very good fashion. We have come down in favour of option one. I hope I have answered the Chairman's question about funding.