Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

One of the key areas that it is necessary to address if one is to really try and strive towards equality is education. I wish to continue to put to the Taoiseach certain points I was making earlier, but just to focus them a little bit more. Fees are increasingly becoming a major barrier to equality of access to education. That is bad, not just for the people who have financial impediments put in front of them in terms of accessing higher education, but also for society because we are not going to get the talented, qualified professionals in key areas that we need if we continue to make life very difficult for them financially because of fees. I referred earlier to the graduate entry medical students, where people, in particular from less well-off backgrounds, have the potential to access medical training and to become doctors. What they tell me is that they are paying €15,000 in fees a year, so that by the end of their training, along with their living costs, they qualify with a debt in excess of €100,000. By the way, they can only get a loan from one bank, namely, Bank of Ireland. The rest of the banks will not even lend them the money to do it. That is crazy when we need doctors but, equally, the student nurses and midwives that we have talked about quite a few times, as well as not getting paid for working during their placements, also have to pay for the privilege of being exploited by paying €3,000 in fees or €7,000 if they previously did a degree. This is madness from the point of view of equality of access to key areas of education where we need qualified people.

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