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

I thank everyone who contributed to this debate. Mostly, however, I thank young people and students for forcing these issues to the top of the agenda, especially during this period of Covid-19. I thank the leaving certificate students this year and last year who simply refused to do the leaving certificate examinations, despite the Government's obsession with trying to carry on with them. Those students insisted they were not going to be forced to do the leaving certificate examinations and they forced the Government to respond to them.

I also thank the student nurses and midwives who educated us all about the dishonesty of the praise for front-line healthcare workers when thousands of student nurses and midwives were working for nothing on the front line during their placements. I thank the occupational therapists, the radiographers and the physiotherapists who contacted us. I extend my thanks as well to the graduate entry medical students, graduate entry pharmacy students and other student health professionals in training for raising the issue of how difficult it is for them to continue and complete their education because of the cost of fees and the exorbitant cost of accommodation. They are just sick of the situation.

In a time when we need those students more than ever, we are making it extraordinarily difficult for them. We put immense pressure and stress on them, instead of making it easier for those students to complete their education, which is of benefit to us all. If we have learned anything from the experience of Covid-19, it is that we need these young people. We need them in our health services. We need young people to build the houses we so desperately require. We need more teachers in our overcrowded classrooms, which are some of the most overcrowded in Europe. We could through the whole list of such requirements.

I thank the Union of Students in Ireland, USI, for their "Education for All" campaign which plays a central part in this motion. The members of that organisation are determined to fight to get rid of fees and to remove the barriers to getting into and completing courses of education. I heard the Minister saying he agrees with much of the sentiment of this motion, but that it will take time to achieve progress and we can only do it incrementally etc.. It is just not good enough to say that he agrees with the sentiment of the motion.

The fact of the matter is that 80,000 students have applied to the CAO application process but only 55,000 places are available. Consequently, 25,000 students who have gone through the anxiety, the hardship, the stress, the competition and the pressure that is associated with the leaving certificate examinations every year - but that has been added to even more this year because college applications are being undertaken in the midst of a pandemic - are going to be disappointed. Potentially, they are going to be demoralised. It is already an extraordinarily difficult situation. Who is to blame for that? It is the Government and the State, because they should have provided the required 80,000 places. Nobody should have to be demoralised, depressed, feel excluded and be denied access to that next level of education.

If we do not address this situation now, then when will we? If this is not the moment for the Government to make the radical changes to ensure people can progress to the higher education, further education or apprenticeship courses of their choice, then when is it going to do that? If this is not the moment when the Government is going to scrap the fees to remove the pressure that leads to the mental health problems suffered by so many young people and address the great financial pressure being placed on so many families, then when will we do it? If we are not going to regularise the situations of the thousands of people working in the higher education system who are on part-time and temporary contracts and who are underpaid and living in poverty, then when are we going to do that? We need people who do research and who push the boundaries of science, art, culture and technological advancement. If we are not going to address this situation now, after this pandemic and the existential challenge it has posed to our society, then when are we going to do it?

We propose this motion on that basis and I encourage the students and young people who made their voices heard over the last year to continue that fight for education for all.

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