Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

I do not think I will use the ten minutes. This Bill offers an opportunity to discuss our approach to foreign students in Ireland. Its primary substantive purpose is to allow the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, although it is a university, to use the name "university" abroad when marketing itself. That notion of universities marketing themselves abroad for foreign students goes to the heart of the problem with our third level system - that it is starved of funding - and our education system generally. There have been repeated cutbacks and attempts by successive Governments to reintroduce full third level fees, and when the current Government was knocked back by a protest movement and by the Opposition it did it through the back door, by allowing registration fees to be raised to the ridiculous level of €3,000, when only a number of years ago they were a minimal amount.

Funding remains a problem for our third level sector because it has not managed to introduce full fees while at the same time not being funded properly through central taxation. The answer to that problem has been to go for international students as bit of a cash cow. The more international students we can get, the more money we can get, and that will provide the things that universities and third level institutions would like to provide. We must reflect on that. Is that the way we want to present our education system and is it the way we want to present ourselves to international students? They are seen as a cash cow.

When the international students come here they are not given a thousand welcomes. A few months ago, one could have seen, even at 10 o'clock at night, a significant number of people, primarily students, queueing outside the Garda National Immigration Bureau, GNIB. At other times of the year the queues start at 5 a.m. or 6 a.m. as people are forced to jump through hoops in the absence of an online application system. That is demonstrative of the way they are treated. The reality is that they are seen as cash cows. They come here but then they are not afforded appropriate rights. Their visas do not give them full residency status. As I understand it, their time here as students does not count towards their citizenship. Students who have children here while they are students or soon afterwards are not entitled to citizenship for their children. They are treated in a certain way that is not very welcoming.

Another case to highlight, which again demonstrates this point, is the situation facing those students whose universities or institutions, particularly language institutions, have closed. They have been left in an extremely precarious position because their visas were linked to their courses and now that their courses have been stopped they have been left hanging. I spoke to a range of those students, and I have participated in a range of these protests, and they do not feel welcomed into this country.

The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland is part of the National University of Ireland, NUI, and it could market itself in that way. Surely we should have an approach that is not just about milking international students. We should have give international students full rights so that they are not forced to queue outside the GNIB, and they should not have to pay the massive fees they are being forced to pay. They should not be discriminated against relative to Irish or other EU students. We should fund our education system properly through progressive central taxation, as opposed to simply relying on them and then treating them in that way.

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