Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)

Bob Hope is one of them. What is the position? The Minister needs to put that on the record because we will be asking the VECs to take up the cudgel and enforce the new grants, but will we give them the funding required to deal with delivering the letter and the spirit of the Bill?

I welcome the fact that the Minister is proposing an independent appeals board. This is a matter that can be teased out on Committee Stage. We need student involvement on those appeal boards. If there are to be local appeal boards in place and if they have to adjudicate on applications which are grey, it is crucial that students, through the Union of Students in Ireland, be part and parcel of that process because they bring a perspective and an urgency that does not exist. If the Minister is modelling the new appeals system on, say, the social welfare appeals system, I would hope there would be clear commitments within the appeal boards on the minimum period within which each individual application would have to be determined. That is really important.

One section of the Bill deals with access plans by colleges. This is one area where colleges have done very little in terms of encouraging children from disadvantaged backgrounds into college. There is no consistency in this regard. Some of the most prominent third level institutions have given scant regard to access plans as a means of encouraging and helping children from disadvantaged backgrounds into college and higher education. We should almost make it conditional for funding from the State that the third level sector and specifically colleges within that sector would have much higher regard for access plans for students in that area. That is an issue to which we need to return.

I have said on numerous occasions since I got this job that one of the great scandals is that if one is of an age where one leaves school and does not go on to higher education, but takes up particular jobs in the labour force, and one decides at some stage in the future to go to college, barriers are put in one's way. There is no policy for helping those who want to go to third level. I have long held the view that every citizen in the Republic should have at his or her disposal an opportunity to access higher level education at any time in their life, be they 20, 40 or 60. We have to get away from the notion that education is for people between five and 21 years of age. If one does not fit into that category at present, barriers are put in one's way. As I said recently at the Aontas conference, it is crucial that we are prepared to make that shift in policy to introduce, effectively, an education credit for every citizen that they can tap into and use at some point in their life if the opportunity exists.

It is also fair to say that the student support system we have in place makes a huge difference to whether people stay in college. The Minister is aware of the dropout rate that exists within colleges — I have heard her mention it on numerous occasions. One of the ways to address the issue is by having proper supports and financial packages within the system to encourage students to remain in college.

The Minister is correct when she suggests one of the key drivers of our economy in the past 15 years or so has been the increased participation rates in higher level education, in which we should all take great pride. She is also correct in stating there has been an increase in participation in all of the income groups. However, the kernel is that among lower income groups and disadvantaged sections of our society we still have not seen that modal shift in terms of providing increasing access and participation in college, a matter to which we must return. The number of people going to college is increasing exponentially, which is fantastic, but the growth rate is among middle and higher income earners, not among people from lower income backgrounds. One of the ways we can deal with this issue is through proper student support. Until we do so, we will not have reached the potential that exists for everyone in this society.

Student support is one of the ways to achieve this but the other aspect is a mentoring programme and actual help. One of the sorriest cases I dealt with in my constituency clinic involved a young lady from a very difficult part of the constituency, who told me the reason she was dropping out of college was not related to money or support or fees, but to the fact that her friends had begun to ignore her because they were not in college and she was. One of the great ways to encourage people to go to college and remain there is not just through family expectation, but through peer group expectation and a support system for students, which is often as important as the financial supports we put in place. We must proof every proposal, idea and decision we make with regard to third level education in terms of looking at it from the perspective of a young person from a disadvantaged background, and we must ask whether they have the supports they need to remain there. These are the important reasons people go to and remain in higher level education.

With those words in mind, I welcome the Bill, although I wish it had been introduced earlier. I will work with the Minister and other colleagues to ensure we improve the Bill on Committee Stage and Report Stage so the new legislation that is put in place will last for a considerable period.

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