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

We certainly need radical reform of further and higher education. Therefore, insofar as the Bill states as its objective a desire to improve the quality of further and higher education, one could not quibble much with its aspirations.

It aims to do the following: promote the interests of students; advance equality, diversity and inclusion; achieve excellence in teaching, learning, etc.; and maximise the contributions of higher education to social, economic, cultural, Irish language and environmental development and sustainability. Those are all very worthy aspirations but I am not sure how the Bill achieves any of those things. I just do not see the connection between the aspirations that are set out in the Bill's own description of itself and what the Bill actually does.

I am somewhat baffled as to what this Bill sets out to achieve. We have another new acronym now with the introduction of designated institutions of higher education, DIHEs. I do not see, for example, how reducing the governance bodies or boards of universities and these designated institutions from 40 to 17 improves things. I do not really understand that. I was just chatting to a student union representative about this. Currently, on those boards of 40 there are about four students, between four and six trade union representatives, some councillors and other appointees. With this new board of 17, there will be fewer students and there may not be any trade union representatives. There will certainly be fewer of them and there will be more ministerial appointees and appointees that the body itself selects based on expertise. I am not saying these boards function brilliantly at the moment but I do not see what this reduction achieves.

This new Higher Education Authority, an tÚdarás um Ard-Oideachas, is to have 12 board members. If I understand it correctly, that board must be gender balanced, which is good. It has to respect diversity and so on and it has to have one student representative, but these are all appointees. Again, I just do not see how this guarantees any of the reforms or aspirations the Bill sets out. There are no radical departures in the Bill to address the problems in further and higher education. I just do not see it. In fact, I am a little worried about this matter because these are all external appointees and I wonder who they will be.

One of the biggest problems with further and higher education is its corporatisation and corporate takeover over recent years. Due to the underfunding of further and higher education over many decades, higher and further education institutes, universities, colleges and so on have been pushed towards trying to get more and more sponsorship from the private sector and from business. It appals me, as someone who was in UCD, that there are monuments to Tony O'Reilly and all sorts of other people up there. There is probably a Denis O'Brien building somewhere, or will be soon if there is not already. That horrifies me, quite honestly. The idea that our universities, colleges and higher education institutes will have to depend on the patronage of billionaires and the super-wealthy to get buildings and fund courses and research worries me deeply.

There are many statistics about the mental health problems experienced by first year students. For example, NUIG did a survey about the extraordinarily high number of students who are suffering with mental health issues, as well as the high level of dropouts and so on. I did not see that when I was in college. I can see the difference when I go up to UCD, which happens to be where I went. The whole place has become almost terrifying because it looks so corporate. The pressure on students is exponentially greater than it was when I was there. It has become much more dehumanised and based on everything I hear from students and students' unions, that is where it is at.

Lots of students feel incredible stress and pressure, including financial pressures. They face huge problems sourcing affordable accommodation as the accommodation built on campus is incredibly expensive. Colleges have a massive overreliance on non-EU students. I do not have any problems with non-EU students but they have to pay full fees and that is a big problem for many of them. Colleges want to get people who pay full fees because they are not getting enough of a subsidy from central government to fund further and higher level education.

There have been some improvements but one of the most terrible facts, which we discussed as part of our motion on open access to further and higher education last March, is that 99% of people from Dublin 6 go to university and college whereas the figure for predominantly working class areas is about 15%. That is a shameful fact about the inequity that exists in access to universities and further and higher education. I know it has improved somewhat but we have a long way to go in terms of unequal access. Those pressures carry on once people get into college or university because of the extraordinary difficulty in getting accommodation if they need it and the extortionate rents. People who have to work their way through college could work all the hours God sent and they still would not be able to pay some of the rents being charged in on-campus accommodation, never mind all the private student accommodation that is being built by investment funds charging €1,000 a month. How are these students supposed to study when they are working like a dog to pay these rents, if they can even manage to pay them? Many just cannot do it.

Student poverty and mental health issues are rampant. I have highlighted this again and again. It is very relevant in the week we are in with the scandal in south Kerry but it is part of a wider problem of chronically deficient mental health services for young people, whether they are adolescents or young adults, and many of them are students. I have highlighted this huge irony, prompted by some of the people who are studying subjects in areas such as psychology, occupational therapy and speech and language therapy, where there is a chronic shortage. The Tánaiste said again today that there is great difficulty in recruiting people to fill these posts. The irony is that we need counselling services but we make it virtually impossible, or extraordinarily difficult, for the people who actually want to fill those posts, study those subjects and do those jobs in psychology, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy and so on to qualify. That is because of the extortionate postgraduate fees and the lack of funding for many of those doctorate courses in psychology.

As I pointed out, there is no funding whatsoever for doctorates in counselling and education psychology, which is precisely the sort of thing we need in our schools and colleges to help our young people. There is no funding whatsoever. I talked to some young people trying to get qualified in psychology and they said they are in a dire situation. They are landed with these fees and are trying to work at the same time while also being on placement and trying to study.

We are putting every barrier we possibly can in the way of them getting qualified, when there is a desperate need for these people to deal with the waiting lists for child and adolescent mental health services.

That is a slight tangent. The point is that our further and higher education institutions should be helping us solve these problems, but we are making it very difficult for people to get into these institutions and then do the things they want to do when they are there. We need radical change in that regard. It is because the institutions are not funded properly that they are increasingly being pushed towards trying to become more like corporate outfits and raising their own money, which means a rise in or over-reliance on fees or extortionately expensive accommodation.

I apologise for going on about counselling services, but I spoke to a student representative today about them. I know that this Bill has a governance framework for accountability around expenditure in terms of central government funding and provides that there should be accountability. However, what does that mean when in UCD, for example, there are some internal counselling services, but the number of people outsourced to private external counselling services has shot up twentyfold in recent years? This Bill does not say anything about stopping that. The college will probably say it is cheaper to outsource. I doubt that is the case, but that is often what is said, probably because the college does not want direct employees. It does not want the hassle of having to employ people and have obligations towards them. Therefore, it outsources the counselling services to the detriment of the students.

Many of the academic staff, including postgraduate students who are doing master's degrees, PhDs and so on, are on crappy hourly contracts and part-time hours. Approximately 50% of academic staff are in precarious working conditions. What will this Bill do to address that? We very much need to increase the capacity of our third level institutions to meet the demands and aspirations of young people coming out of school who want to progress their education in the things they want to do. It is very hard for them to do those things because of the stupid, unnecessary and anachronistic leaving certificate system. Even if people get in, we do not have half enough places to meet the demand for what they want to do. When I told the Tánaiste that we should have open access, he said we do not have the staff or the capacity, but of course we do because we have all these academic staff on precarious part-time contracts who would love permanent jobs working in our educational institutions. However, we do not want to force the universities and colleges to employ more people and increase that capacity by giving them proper jobs and job security.

I do not see what this Bill does to change any of that. Those are the big issues. I listened to the Minister of State earlier on and I read through the stuff, but I do not see what this Bill achieves. I would like to see it being much more specific and tied down in terms of the objective to ensure absolutely open access for everybody to the further and higher education of their choice. It would be far better for the students, for the staff, for our society and ultimately for the economy, although I hate reducing education down to the economy, if people were able to access the higher education they want. If resources were put into making sure a state-of-the-art education is provided, if all the financial and other barriers to people doing what they want to do were removed and if we resourced our further and higher education institutions to support students in providing that kind of education, it would be better for the students, the staff and our society. I do not see precisely where this Bill will help achieve that.

I do not have much more to say. Maybe the Government spokespeople will respond by saying that I am completely wrong, that it is all in the Bill, that this will revolutionise further and higher education and that it will achieve all of these things, but I do not see where the Bill provides for that. There is nothing particularly objectionable in the Bill, but I do not see what in the Bill will change things. I am specifically concerned by the reduction in the numbers and the changes in the make-up of the governance bodies of our colleges and universities. I would like to hear the argument for how this Bill will make things better in that regard. The alternative in terms of governance would involve the students and the academic and non-academic staff, rather than appointees and overly paid executives and administrators, being the dominant group in the governance of these institutions. It would be best if democratically elected representatives of the students and the academic and non-academic staff, including the porters, the caterers and everybody else who works in these institutions, elected the majority. Of course experts in finance and others will be needed, but the dominant force in running our institutions of education should be the people who study in them, the academic staff who deliver the education and the other workers who make these institutions function. That is what I would like to see. It would be a real revolution in the governance of our further and higher education institutions. All of that will be no more than the moving around of deckchairs unless we put in the resources to ensure we have open access to further and higher education and all of the financial and other barriers to people realising their full creative and intellectual potential are removed. At present, those multiple barriers fundamentally distort and damage the ability of our higher and further education institutions to do the job they should be doing, which is now more important than ever when one looks at the skills shortages we have in so many areas. It makes absolutely no sense that we allow those barriers to persist. We need to overhaul radically our approach to further and higher education.

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