Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This important Bill reflects the importance of higher education across the State, including in my own constituency through Maynooth University, which is in my home town. Higher education matters to all of us. It is encouraging to see the Minister has taken on board some of the suggestions from pre-legislative scrutiny, including ramping up North-South co-operation and a role for the HEA in promoting an Ghaeilge. We in Sinn Féin feel the Bill could be a bit stronger on that, as Deputy Conway-Walsh has outlined. It is welcome and positive, however. On the North-South issue, we still want to see specific roles for the HEA in student enrolment. It is absolutely vital. We are also glad to see the Minister will no longer appoint the majority of board members to higher education institutions. That is very welcome.

However, despite all the talk and all the Bills, we will never get to where we really need to be without adequate funding. I tell the Minister funding is where it is at. I am asking him to put the Government's money where its mouth is by publishing the Cassells report's economic findings and removing higher education from the brutality of austerity. We have now had at least two generations of students go through the system with it in the grip of austerity. We really need to do much better for them and by them. It goes without saying that Sinn Féin is hugely ambitious in higher education, for all our people and what they can achieve within it. That is very much on display in the North. I know there was a lot of chagrin from some of the sectarian Northern commentariat but we see the importance of higher education. We want and need to see many more places available to prospective students so we can have more thinkers, more professionals and more well-paid jobs for all our workers across society. As a new Deputy, I often find that we are delighted when a new post is created but then we cannot find a qualified person to fill it. Therefore, we really must make more spaces available. We are very glad to see that the Bill provides for structured student engagement and for lifelong and flexible learning. Free secondary education revolutionised life and opportunity in this State for our people and now we need an equal freedom and opportunity when it comes to higher education here.

On freedom and opportunity, I hope the Minister does not mind if I take advantage of this opportunity to ask about the situation at Maynooth University where students have been notified that courses with over 250 students are still to be taught online even though college catering and hospitality are open, as they indeed are across the town. All the pubs are open in Maynooth. There are students who have only had a whiff of a lecture hall since they started college and they really need to know why their lectures are online while society has reopened. I will put down a question to the Minister on that. It is not just me who is anxious as many of the Maynooth students who have been contacting me are very anxious for a reply as well.

For us in Sinn Féin, another critical part of higher education is apprenticeships. While I note there will be an apprenticeship office, it really must deliver. We will be keeping a close eye on that so it does not become a vehicle to dismantle the craft apprentice model because it is very important. I know from my constituents in Kildare North that there are many bright, talented young people in secondary school and some of them are bored stiff with it. Sometimes they are made to feel kind of useless because they think in a different way and have a different kind of talent. School is not for everybody and nor is third level, in the form of the traditional college. For some of these kids, every day is torture. They are dying to get out and start an apprenticeship that reflects their talent and career ambition. They have so much to offer their community and our economy and when it comes to higher education it is important they are not left behind.

Before I finish, I am also anxious that there be more trade union representation on the HEA board. Equally, I would like to see the Bill give the HEA an explicit mandate to protect the public nature of public education, especially as it provides such a clear pathway for private colleges to become designated as higher education institutions and potentially be funded in the same way as public colleges. Like housing, education is a civil right. It is not a privilege, a commodity for profit or just something to be consumed. It is therefore critical that the public nature of third level education be considered sacrosanct. I ask that those points be taken on board.

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