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

The Minister mentioned that Grangegorman is in the action plan. It is there but there is very little else about capital spending in the third level sector. It is hardly mentioned at all. There is no mention of the core expenditure per student being down by so much in the action plan. What proves the point I make is that when it came to the budget and proper, significant political pressure from this side of the House on third level funding, all of a sudden there was a plan for third level funding in the budget. It is a deficient plan. We say there is not enough money but the plan is there and we want to see the details of it. I am not entirely satisfied with how the Minister has proposed to allocate the funding for the third level sector. It is something I intend to write to him about. We had understood that, apart from the postgraduate funding, the majority of that money would be going into the Higher Education Authority's system for allocating funding, and we think that should happen.

We must get to grips with the reality. The Minister has referred to flexibility. What he means is that classes have become significantly larger and teaching staff numbers have reduced significantly. That is the nature of the flexibility, but that is not good for students or the country.

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