Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

That is correct.Yesterday one of the largest trade unions in the State published a very significant report on the issue of wage levels in this country. The report found that Ireland is now a low-wage economy. It found that there is a disproportionate percentage of people working in low-paying jobs. In effect, Ireland is now competing with Portugal to be the low-pay capital of Europe. We want to move away from a model of a low-pay economy to a model of a highly skilled economy with a well-educated and qualified workforce and good quality, well-paid jobs.

An absolute key to this is education. "Education, education education" needs to be the slogan. All barriers to education must be removed. Last Saturday, The Irish Timesreported on a recommendation to increase college and university fees to €4,000 a year, which will be contained in the as yet unfinished Cassells report into third level funding.

The newspaper went further and said that a Department of Public Expenditure and Reform briefing paper for the Minister, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, states that €4,000 is not enough and needs to be increased to an even higher level. The report did not tell us what level, if any, the briefing paper suggested fees might be raised to. It could be €5,000, €6,000 or €7,000 but we do not know. That briefing paper should be published immediately and the Cassells report, when complete, should also be published immediately.

There cannot be a discussion on the jobs of the future without discussing the educational qualifications of the workforce. I believe civil servants and those Deputies on the Government benches are planning to rig the system even further in favour of their kids, the kids from the middle classes and the higher income sections of society. They will get the good education and, as those on the other side of the House hope, they will get the good jobs. Meanwhile, our kids, the kids from the working class homes, will get the educational scraps and the McJobs, in a full employment society which is stuffed to the gills with the working poor.

To add salt to the wounds, Cassells is reported to be on the verge of recommending the introduction of a student loan scheme. Do Government Deputies not realise that these schemes have proved to be a disaster in the United States, the United Kingdom and elsewhere where they have been introduced? While we might have what, in capitalist terms, is deemed to be full employment - that is, unemployment of 5%, 6% or 7% - we will have hundreds of thousands of graduates, and those who do not get as far as being graduates, saddled with a mountain of debt running into tens of thousands of euro. These graduates, by the way, often get caught in a pincer movement. On the one hand, they end up in low-paid, precarious employment while on the other, they are saddled with massive debts.

There are 160,000 persons or more in full-time third level education in this State. I am appealing to those 160,000 people and, by the way, to the school students of this country, to watch this debate very carefully. We are not today or this week calling on 160,000 young people to come out onto the streets in opposition to the student fees and to the threat of a student loan scheme but it may very well take 160,000 young people coming out onto the streets to put an end to this class bias and this madness. Watch this space on this issue.

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