Mr. Jim Miley:

I agree with Senator Mullen concerning the prestige badge associated with the leaving certificate. I think we have a cultural issue around this that needs to be overcome. The argument for reserving places for students as a quid pro quofor them staying in the workforce in Ireland is in principle one that should be explored. As Dr. Ryan outlined, there are private companies doing that at the moment. The banks and some tech companies do that on the basis that they will pay for someone's education if the person stays with them for a defined period of time. I would have thought that this should be looked at.

I might broaden Deputy Conway-Walsh's question into a wider piece. One of the challenges we have, and we have made submissions on this to Government in the wider context of funding, is the fact that students are very narrowly defined in the funding model for third level. It tends to be framed around an 18 or 19-year-old coming out of secondary school, who, of course, make up the bulk of students. Increasingly, we are seeing a much bigger cohort of mature students and part-time students coming into the system. There is no appropriate funding model around them. The question raised by the Deputy arising out of that email she quoted is very much in this realm because there is no natural mechanism for a student like that to be handled by the system. In the reform of the funding model, one of the points we raised is that if we are serious about lifelong learning, and this is very much in the lifelong learning space, we must ensure the model caters for that in terms of the cash. It is all very well to have a policy about lifelong learning but if the cash is not there to support it and the mechanism for that cash to flow is not there, it will not happen.