Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to have an opportunity to speak on this particularly important item and I thank the Minister for State for the work that has been done in that Department. It is timely that the emphasis is put on third and fourth level education for the simple reason that we face much competition in the workplace and will face greater competition in the future as our next-door neighbour moves away, as part of the Brexit issue. We will now be expected to face more challenges and to become an anchor for people who wish, hopefully, to invest in this country and we will also be able to put in place the workforce that is qualified, competent, reliable and the best in the business. It is possible to do so.

I will briefly mention some of the issues already referred to by others in the debate, for instance, the issue of academic bullying. That kind of thing should never happen at any level in any institution. We are long enough in the tooth looking at these things to be able to say that nobody should expect to get away with that in institutions as august as those at third level. Let us hope that adequate action is being taken to ensure that does not continue.

References has also be made to the award of higher education grants. I, like an Ceann Comhairle, strongly advocated years ago for free third level education in order to be able to give everybody an equal chance. Unfortunately, the budgetary situation did not allow that to continue. As a result this education is not as available as it could be. However, there will always be people who say on the one hand or on the other but we should compare our situation with that of the United States. The availability of third level education here is way ahead. That is why we have an advantage. In the United States, for example, it costs approximately $80,000 to receive a third level education, if one can get one, and there are many reasons why one cannot. We need to move further and further away from that model and make third and fourth level education more available to the people who are in the community, not necessarily at any particular level, but everybody should have equal access.

My last point is on the reluctance of some third level institutions to refund the accommodation element of the SUSI grant. I do not understand this as this accommodation could not be taken up by students because of the lockdown, and rightly so. Why could these institutions not have found a way to re-let their accommodation to somebody else? It is not as if there were not people looking for accommodation in the country at the present time. This could easily have been done on a short-term basis and they could have got their money from there. Instead, some chose to apologise and state that they could not refund this money as this payment was already part of the agreement. Circumstances of course changed where Covid-19 took off at a rate, and is still running. I strongly urge those institutions that refused to refund the accommodation level of the grant to do so as a matter of great urgency.

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