Cecilia Keaveney (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for giving me an opportunity to raise this issue which is of importance to the students of Donegal and all the Border counties, in particular, as well as the rest of the country. Third level fees were introduced in the North of Ireland a few years ago and a change to the fee structure is being planned for September 2006 whereby top-up fees will be charged to students. It would appear that while in the past the tab for students from the Republic was collected by education boards, this will no longer be the case and, therefore, fees will be applicable to Irish students attending Northern universities.

I declare an interest in that I attended university in Jordanstown just outside Belfast for seven years. I know how important and useful it is to be able to access many different universities when filling in UCCA forms and other third level college application forms at leaving certificate stage. In the context of the Good Friday Agreement we are supposed to be advocating all-Ireland policies and the integration of the Thirty-two Counties in terms of access to education, health, retail therapy and so on. It is important that the Minister for Education and Science would intervene in this matter.

I was annoyed on looking through the manifestoes and policy papers of Northern Ireland parties because, as a member of the British-Irish Inter-Parliamentary Body, the issue of top-up fees and access to Northern colleges would probably not arise if the Northern Executive were up and running. One of the parties stated that fees exacerbate inequalities in access and that the decline in the number of students from low income, rural, isolated and marginal communities was unacceptable.

Another party, coming from a different background, stated that fees act as a deterrent to potential university students from disadvantaged backgrounds and that Queen's University and the University of Ulster had worked hard to be open to all. One party referred to the intention of Queen's University and the University of Ulster to apply a maximum of £3,000 per year from 2006 and that this would lead to severe hardship for students. However, another party stated that the amount of £3,000 per year would only be an introductory amount that would inevitably rise.

A further argument propounded by one party was that top-up fees would damage the health service because people from working class backgrounds would not be attracted to the health professions because of the cost. A party from a completely different background stated that students could opt for cheaper courses regardless of the value they add to their education because subjects like science, engineering and professions such as law and medicine would be more expensive and thus people would not apply for them.

Coming from Donegal, I would like to think that the people with all these views on education would make their own decisions. I would love to see the Executive up and running so that these decisions could be made. Unfortunately, as the Executive is not up and running, students from the Republic could face fees that did not exist previously. This will be to the detriment of students wishing to attend the University of Ulster at Jordanstown, Coleraine or Magee or Queen's University. We have enough anomalies in the system with the recognition of courses and NVQs.

We are supposed to encourage people into education to give them foundations. We keep on using the mantra that a better educated population is a better equipped one in terms of society and the big, bad world, yet we appear to be in a negative free-fall since the Good Friday Agreement in that, in the past, people like me from the Republic were free to go to Northern universities and their fees were dealt with but students in future will be charged. The argument in the North is that everybody is getting charged so everybody is being treated equally, but I am getting representations from people who want to avail of Northern universities and from families that have more than one child who wishes to access university. The prospect of such fees is bad enough for one child but would be extremely difficult for families with a number of children wishing to go to university.

Given that the Executive is not in operation, it is important that the Minister of State, Deputy Seán Power, would pass on my request to the Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Hanafin, to raise this issue as a matter of urgency with her counterpart in Northern Ireland rather than wait for people to complain this time next year about fees or that nobody went to the Northern universities.

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