Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is in complete and utter denial about the crisis facing our third-level sector. That is obvious from his reply but it is also obvious in the action plan on education that he published where there are two lines devoted to the crisis in third-level funding and the Cassells report. When that plan was published, one of the first things I looked for was what it said about third level. I had to keep reading in order to discover if I was missing something. It is not there and that demonstrates the Department’s lack of commitment. The Minister talks about having the best education system in the world and about international standards but he dismisses the rankings. I agree that rankings are not perfect but the more the Minister starves the system of funding, the higher the pupil-teacher ratio will become, the further the rankings will drop and the less attractive universities will be to foreign non-EU students who provide huge funding by paying higher fees. This is a vicious circle which has to stop in the forthcoming budget.

We will discuss the Cassells report. Even if he wanted to, the Minister could not implement the report overnight but he can - on the night of the budget - implement a change in direction to ensure that the sector and the system are adequately funded. He says the system is performing well and that it is doing so against incredible odds. However, it is not performing well in the rankings, which, imperfect though they might be, do mean something.

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