Mr. Jim Miley:

I am aware of the clock but briefly, I would urge the committee to have a special session on access in the near future because there is a very substantive issue which we need to discuss there. We need to recognise that progress has been made but it is not enough. We have a record number of applicants under the disability access route to education, DARE, and higher education access route, HEAR, schemes. That is very encouraging. It is those who have not applied or who do not get in that we need to focus on as Dr. Hegarty rightly outlined.

The point I was making on loans is that we need to avoid the law of unintended consequences in the legislation. It is important that we retain access to loan funding for the system. Otherwise we could create a real problem.