Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

For many working-class students who go to college and take up STEM careers, and then find they want to transfer and become teachers, as the Minister has acknowledged, it will cost them €5,000 a year in fees alone for at least two years. He seems perfectly happy with that idea. Does he understand what it costs to leave a job, or maybe hold on to some element of a part-time job, perhaps when people have emerging family commitments, as well as issues around housing? Yet, the Minister says that, in order to do this, they will have to find €5,000 a year in fees alone at a time when they will also have to put clothes on their backs, keep a roof over their heads and pay for their keep and perhaps that of their families. I believe the Minister does not understand the struggle it will be for many people who would otherwise transfer. The economics of what he, as an economist, has just laid out for us is fine in economic terms but does he realise it is almost impossible to do what he is suggesting they do? Finding a spare €5,000 a year is fine if a person is well off but not for an ordinary working person.

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