Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the additional €38.5 million in the 2017 budget and the promise of €160 million over the next three budgets, as well as the proposal to increase the national training fund levy from 0.7% to 1% in forthcoming budgets. There must still be a fundamental and early decision on this and the Tánaiste did not reply to the central question of when the evaluation report will be produced and if there is an implementation plan for what I would regard as a very regressive proposal. It was her Government and the previous Fianna Fáil Government that slashed third level funding over the past eight or nine years, from almost €1.5 billion to under €1 billion. If the Government proceeds with this, it may as well tear up the national plan for equity of access to higher education for 2015 to 2018. With 45% of our workforce now being graduates, with education playing a primary role in Ireland's growth and recovery since the early 1990s, should the Government not look positively to the long-term earning power and taxes of graduates to fund a free third level system rather than embarking on a regressive, unwieldy and dangerous system of student loans? It should in this case follow the good example of Scotland, Germany and France.

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