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

I am supposed to be sharing time with Deputy Fiona O'Loughlin but we were not expecting our time to arise quite this early. I will propose to share the time in any event and hopefully she will realise our time has begun.

I believe Brexit is one of the biggest mistakes that the British people have ever made and that the British Government continues to make. It is a horrendous thing that has happened. It has happened in the context of a majority of the British public having a complete lack of education of the consequences for them. It has happened while powerful and sinister interests in global geopolitics have interfered in new and unprecedented ways in referendums over the last number of years. This has been reported as recently as last weekend by Carole Cadwallader in The Guardian. It brings a whole new dimension to our world political system and we would do well to read that article, particularly in terms of the influence of very sinister elements of the American right and of the Russian nation. We would do well to keep those particular influences in mind in various debates happening in this country as well. We also saw that influence attempted in France during the presidential election, where it failed. It succeeded in the UK and in the United States of America. We must be vigilant about that. I say that as an aside, but as an important aside.

I am education spokesperson for my party and it is very important to lay on the record the issues in respect of education that arise from Brexit because they are serious, multifaceted and, like everything else in the context of Brexit, they are not easily understood and they are not easily predictable. We must identify them, however, and the Government must get to work on them. The issues in respect of education span primary education, secondary education, third level and the whole area of further education, training and apprenticeships. It also spans the area of research, which should not be just a matter for the Department of Education and Skills but should be a responsibility and interest across Government.

With regard to primary and second level, there are small amounts of students who cross the Border to go to school and their particular status will have to be resolved in the context of the negotiation. It is not the biggest issue in terms of Brexit but it is an issue which is there and which the Government will have to identify and address. There is also an issue, particularly in terms of primary education, with the recognition of teacher qualifications. That will have to be seriously addressed and negotiated. It is an issue that will come across in various professions but it will have a key impact in terms of primary education.

In terms of secondary education, there are already signs that the English language is going to be downgraded to some extent post-Brexit. I wonder if that will happen on a practical basis. Will people start to speak French at meetings? The Leas-Cheann Comhairle will know that English had become the lingua francaof many meetings at European level. I know that at our own party meetings at European level, which I attend regularly, English is the language used. I wonder will that begin to change. We must wait and see but we must be prepared for that at second level. The Minister must introduce his modern languages strategy and get to work on it. He announced it three weeks ago but has not yet published it. We must educate our young people, and indeed ourselves, up to a standard in a range of modern European languages that may become more useful in the years ahead.

It is at third level, however, that the greatest challenges face us in terms of Brexit. There are currently quite a number of students that come from the North to the South. There are also approximately 12,000 Irish students in the UK. Their particular status is uncertain. There was an increase in terms of the number of Irish students coming to the UK and UK students, including those from Northern Ireland, coming here. That seems to have tapered off in the last academic year or so. The universities are reporting anecdotal evidence to me of a drop-off in the number of Northern students coming to the South. That is deeply worrying. One of the ways I got to know a lot of people from both sides of the community in the North was in my class in college, where half of the class were from the North. That was an unusually large number at that time. We need to integrate our education systems more and we need to allow that free movement and access. That should be the Minister, Deputy Bruton's top priority in the context of Brexit. The common travel area and freedom of movement for students should be maintained post Brexit.

It caused some controversy, and indeed some interest, in the North of Ireland when I stated my beliefs regarding cross-Border education. While students who come to the South from the North or the UK are guaranteed to be treated as EU students for the remainder of their three or four years of academic life, that same guarantee and proposition is not available to students starting in September 2018 or thereafter. It is important to get that message out. On the basis of the Good Friday Agreement, and without prejudice to the rest of the Brexit negotiation, I believe it is open to the Government to tell students that we will give them EU status indefinitely if they come from the North of Ireland. The Government should do that unilaterally. It needs to be done. I think it can be done without regard to anything else. It can be done without regard to reciprocity. We should hope for reciprocity but of course we cannot deliver that. We are not the authority in the North or in the UK. That should be done as a generous offer. We should say that students can come here from the North as EU students indefinitely. That would certainly give a boost to our universities. It would give a boost to young people, certainly in the North of Ireland, but also in the UK as a whole. They voted in favour of remaining in the European Union. I think those benefits need to be extended to them unilaterally.

My worry about the education sector at third level, listening to the academics speak, is that the opportunities that arise from Brexit are being emphasised more than the threats. There will be opportunities because Ireland is an English-speaking country, a member of the EU, a member of the euro and has some excellent universities. There are opportunities there to attract research funding and academics who are EU citizens who wish to continue to work in the EU. Already there is anecdotal evidence of an increase in interest. I am worried, however, that optimism is overshadowing some of the threats. We need to carefully examine both sides of that particular ledger and I am not sure that is being done at the moment. There is too much of a sense of everything being rosy in the garden at the moment. I am worried about that. I ask for a note of caution while recognising that there are indeed opportunities.

I will yield to my colleague in a moment, but there are tremendous links between Ireland and the UK in terms of research. Between 2005 and 2014, there were nearly 17,000 papers co-authored between Irish and UK academics. We need to continue that as best we can. I hope that type of co-operation will continue after Brexit, but there are issues that we can deal with now at a national level.

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