Pauline Tully (Sinn Fein)
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A Chathaoirligh, I congratulate you on your appointment as Chair of this committee and I look forward to working with you - again. We worked very successfully on the disability matters committee during the last Government's term. It was an excellent committee with a lot of cross-party co-operation, and I am sure the same will happen under your control of this committee.

There are a lot of issues we need to tease out and look at in further and higher education. First, I commend everybody involved in our education sector on the tremendous work they do. We are and have to be very proud of our education sector and how well educated our young people are in comparison with other countries and jurisdictions, but there is always room for improvement. There are a number of issues I would like to see prioritised.

One is student accommodation because it really affects student life at the moment. It is tied in with the housing crisis but has to be tackled by our third level institutions to ensure there is sufficient student accommodation close to colleges in order that students can benefit from college life.

Tied in with that is the student contribution charge and the Student Universal Support Ireland, SUSI, grant scheme. The latter really needs to be reformed, especially in the context of mature students having to move back home to live with parents, again because of the housing crisis and how that affects the funding of third level courses.

Planning around third level education is another issue. We must ensure we are educating the people we need in our society, within the construction sector, our health system and so forth, and tie that in with apprenticeships. College and university are not for everybody, and apprenticeships are a great way of learning as you work and should be expanded into other areas. We need to increase the number of people involved not only in the construction sector but also in other areas.

I would like to see greater North-South co-operation. That is really important. We must also expand the ability to learn through Irish, which is nonexistent at the moment at third level and further level.

I also want to see greater mental health supports and health supports in general. Learning from the last committee we were on, Chair, which you mentioned, supports for disabled people are another issue. Again, part of that might involve the reform of the SUSI grant in order that people can engage in study part time or remotely, working from home and so forth, to ensure that all students, regardless of ability or disability, are able to participate in further education.