Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

On higher education specifically, the budget provides for an increase of between €50 million and €60 million next year. This is funded by an increase of 0.1% in employers' PRSI.

That comes on top of a similar increase last year. We have also identified a super surplus of approximately €300 million in the national training fund. That money will also be available to our higher education institutions. Project Ireland 2040 includes a pretty major investment in our higher education institutions including our universities and institutes of technology. One only has to travel around the country and visit our colleges and institutes of technology to see how many new buildings have been built in recent years and we are going to see a lot more. The year 2019 will be the third year in a row in which we see a significant increase in funding for our third level institutions.

We always have to bear in mind that it is not just about a simple calculation of how much money is spent. If we divide the total amount of money we spent on health in Ireland by the number of patients we are one of the highest spending countries in the world, but spending does not necessarily result in outcomes. The same thing applies in education. It is a very simplistic and facile analysis to just take the budget and divide it by the number of students or the number of patients.

See this speech in context