Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House and congratulate him on the establishment of this very important Department. The Department has to address some fundamental issues in the third level education sector very quickly. Key stakeholders in the sector have been calling for increased investment for higher and further education for many years now. Third level research is a fundamental part of our growth engine and is essential to our future prosperity. The Labour Party supported calls, which I reiterate, for a fully publicly funded third and fourth level system as per the Cassells report. In our recent manifesto, we committed to developing an implementation strategy to increase university funding for both teaching and research, building in the recommendations of Cassells. This will be needed now more than ever with the gaping hole left in our universities, given the funding situation and stresses that our third level sector is under in terms of the near-evaporation for the foreseeable future of fees that we could ordinarily expect from international students.

The Labour Party's July stimulus package calls for an immediate increase in funding for third level under the new Department, which should pave the way for a lowering of student fees. In addition, we called for enhanced student supports and increased SUSI payments to ensure that no one drops out of their studies due to Covid-19. We know how negatively impacted the under-25s in particular have been and we cannot sacrifice their education and prospects because of our experience around the pandemic and its economic impact. I hope the establishment of the new Department is a sign of a fresh focus on both the immediate Covid-19 related measures that are required and the long-term needs of higher and further education.

Now is the time to start a conversation on what the post-secondary and higher education sector should look like into the future. This not only includes universities but also the network of institutes of technology, which we have to develop, and the new necklace of those operations. I have been working hard with the various stakeholders in Louth, east Meath and across the north east to develop technological university status for Dundalk Institute of Technology, DKIT, and to develop those relationships that will make it happen with partner institutes. Post-leaving certificate courses, PLCs, apprenticeships, lifelong learning and adult learning will also play a crucial role. The Minister will agree that these areas have been left behind for far too long as a Cinderella service. In his previous statements, the Minister has acknowledged that they have been left behind with less of an emphasis placed on them. This leads to inequality and a certain snobbishness, as the Minister said earlier. Education of any description is no burden. We are all in a process of lifelong learning. We take up those opportunities when they arise and we need to go after them. We need to make sure there is an equality of treatment in terms of further and higher education insofar as we can achieve that. We now have an opportunity to have a national conversation about our collective vision for the post-second level educational landscape.

The Labour Party's July stimulus package also includes a strong youth guarantee that was at least by definition absent from the Government's July stimulus programme notwithstanding the fact that we do welcome commitments around apprenticeships, lifelong learning and further education which were announced yesterday. The youth guarantee would have given a guaranteed offer of decent work and meaningful training, whether through an apprenticeship scheme, voluntary placement in an appropriate community setting, in-work training and-or remote study for everyone under 25 not currently in an educational or training programme or in employment. It would have supported those young people I referred to earlier who have been the hardest hit by the economic fallout of the pandemic. Now, unfortunately, there is a very real risk of another generation being left behind. In addition, our focus on lifelong learning, one of the five key tests that the Labour Party has established around our judgment of the effectiveness of the July stimulus, would not only have supported workers through this crisis but also increased Ireland's shockingly low rate of in-work training. Compared with a rate of 33% in Denmark, in Ireland we have a shockingly poor level of consistent in-work training, coming in at about 5.5% of our workforce. The Labour Party stimulus package seeks significant investment in retraining, upskilling and lifelong learning to make sure people are ready for the jobs of the future and that their skills constantly evolve and update. We committed to tripling investment in State training services and schemes.

There is a real opportunity to reshape our economy and take the necessary steps to reorient our labour market towards even higher levels of productivity and value creation, which in turn will create higher paid jobs and address income inequality. Lifelong learning is critical to paving the path towards a high-road economy with a highly skilled, highly productive and highly paid workforce. The crisis has shown both the value and the risk of neglecting investment in our educational sector. During the Covid-19 crisis we have had the manifest benefit of researchers across a broad range of disciplines based in many of our higher education institutions contributing to our national effort to fight the pandemic. The NPHET group of experts has led us through these past six month or so and the bulk of them have come through our own higher education institutes. We are proud of the role they are now playing. They are not just the scientists and medical experts but also those specialising in behavioural change, economics, medical ethics and law. However, this expertise and our long-standing reputation for quality research has been at risk for some time now. Our previously world-class universities have plunged down the rankings in the past five years. This is unfortunate. The slide is directly related to concerns around inconsistent funding and so on. We really need that question of consistent funding and multi-annual envelopes to get over the line. That needs to be a priority for the new Minister and his Department.

I hope the new Department does not neglect the arts and humanities. The broader societal impact of the crisis needs to be assessed and understood across a wide range of disciplines, including cultural, sociological and historical ones. As the Minister knows, the arts have suffered greatly during recent months, yet live stream initiatives such as Other Voices, Courage 2020 and the Irish National Opera live streams as well as initiatives in my own constituency have provided free entertainment for people in their homes when venues have been shuttered.

Investment in the arts is called for. The national campaign for the arts needs to be included in this fresh approach to further and higher education and life-long learning. We have to be conscious of the function and role of the arts and creative industries in our economy. That cannot be neglected.

In the coming months and years, we need a collaborative approach to navigate our way through the uncertainty. Everything is subject to change but clarity and reassurance must be provided to all the stakeholders involved, including students, lecturers and others such as trade unions. Trade unions must be the fore in leading this change, as they want to be, and not left out in the cold as has all too often been the case in the past.

I wish the Minister, Deputy Harris, the best of luck in his new role and I congratulate the Minister of State, Deputy Niall Collins, on his appointment. I also wish the officials in the new Department well. It is an exciting to be at the helm of a new Department at this point in our economic situation. I hope that the engagement which the Minister plans to have with stakeholders is positive. That stakeholder engagement needs to be inclusive and we need to learn from what they have to say to us and to work in a partnership and collaborative way to make sure that we get bang for our buck while putting further and higher education at the centre of not just our economy but our society.

I echo the points made by Deputy Conway-Walsh. It is unfortunate that Government has seen fit to include an amendment in the legislation to provide for an additional allowance for an additional super junior Minister at Cabinet. This appears to be a move to keep all Government parties sweet. I recall a time when we made do with two super junior Ministers - a Chief Whip and a super junior Minister given a particular job at a particular moment in time on a particular policy matter. This proposal is most unfortunate to say the least. It does not sit well with the public in these very straitened times when families across this country are going through immense difficulties and facing a very uncertain and anxious future. Will the Minister confirm that we will not revert to the days of the largesse of Charlie McCreevy and Bertie Ahern when every junior Minister had a press adviser and a policy adviser costing millions of euro per annum to the Exchequer? We abolished that in 2011, as should be the case. There is, of course, an argument for it - I benefited from it myself during my spell as a super junior Minister. As a super junior Minister, I attended Cabinet and had particular responsibilities that required me to have advice and additional support but I do not believe a case can be made to provide additional special adviser support to Ministers of State in their roles, particularly at this time of economic constraints for our country. Can the Minister clarify that that will not be the case?

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