Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to engage in this significant debate. This important Bill will bring about important changes to the delivery of higher education. It will help to modernise our higher education system by bringing it into the 21st century and, in turn, allowing it to meet the demands of our society.

It is relevant in this debate to consider where we have come from with regard to higher education and access to higher education. At the time of the introduction of the HEA, Ireland had 20,000 students in higher education. Today, we have more than 200,000. This remarkable growth has helped to unlock the talent and potential of millions of people over the years.

Our success in expanding the accessibility to higher education in Ireland has contributed to building our economy, attracting foreign investment, providing new possibilities for our people and sending a message to everyone on this island that should you have the drive and passion, opportunities will be presented in this country. Such an increase in this sector demands reform and in such a scenario, it is important that legislation keeps pace with the real-world implications facing the higher education sector and, indeed, students in Ireland.

As our society changes, so do the demands within our society. A thriving higher education sector allows for the sector to deliver people with the skills that this country requires so that we can continue to grow, both as a people and as an economy. I am, therefore, pleased that a long overdue review of how we as a country approach higher education is now under way, and credit must be given to the Ministers for driving this agenda.

A key component of that change is with regard to apprenticeships. For too long and to our detriment as a country, a stigma has been attached to those engaging with apprenticeships or alternative routes in higher education. This has limited our progress and limited the choice of people emerging from our schools or seeking to retrain. Indeed, we only have to look toward our partners in the EU to recognise the lost opportunity resulting from us too long ignoring the role of apprenticeships. Germany, for example, has a long history of successful apprenticeship programmes and, indeed, many business leaders in Germany have come through such programmes.

By engaging with and developing this area of higher education in Ireland, we can harness a yet untapped skill set in our economy which, in turn, will contribute to the development of well-paid jobs and help the nation reach our goals, including but not limited to retrofitting, which will help tackle our carbon emissions and help in efforts to deliver on the construction of badly-needed homes across Ireland. To that end, and to be a little parochial about it, I represent the fastest growing community in the country yet, while Fingal has TU Dublin Blanchardstown and DCU south of the airport, when it comes to further education and training facilities we are the poor cousins of the south side of the city. That is why Swords would be an eminently sensible location for such a facility, with expected growth to 100,000 people by the mid-2030s. I encourage the Minister of State, Deputy Niall Collins, as I have in the past at the committee, to conduct research into the demands of north Dublin versus the offering currently available.

A vital component of this Bill will be significant and momentous change to the governance of higher education institutions. This Bill will put the Higher Education Authority, HEA, on a regulator footing, allowing it the powers and authority to seek information, distribute funding and respond when such funding is misused. This is a major and important change to the current system in which the higher education system operates.

When funding is provided, the HEA will issue conditions of funding which must be complied with for the receipt of those public funds. Here, again, we can see a significant change to the system.

The reform of the structures for the governing authorities will ensure that boards are competency-based and smaller in size. By doing so, we will move away from the archaic and non-transparent approaches that have been used too long within our higher education institutes and in the process, make them fairer and more equitable.

The result of these changes will put students at the centre of the higher education system, more so than ever before. This will provide higher quality in our education sector, providing necessary accountability, delivering excellence in teaching, providing for the skill demands of our society and increase diversity, equality and inclusion. Putting students at the heart of our higher education system will, I believe, result in better education and options for students in Ireland and this, in turn, will benefit our country as a whole.

The contents of this Bill will also increase our international reputation within higher education institutions. We in Ireland have been rightly proud for our ability to attract an increasing number of international students to our institutions and this Bill will only serve to enhance our reputation abroad by bringing new talent to our shores, both through the student body and academic professionals and administrators. Such changes in a society can unlock new areas of life for our people, giving us the freedom to find the right fit that can lead to the ideas and creativity that ricochets across our society from the cultural to the economic. We can only benefit from such developments driving our society forward with greater inclusion and participation by allowing everyone to engage in the country around them with new ideas which I hope will lead to them flourishing as students.

It is also noteworthy in the context of this debate to highlight the important changes that will occur with regard to Student Universal Support Ireland, SUSI. The Minister has been passionate about delivering reform in SUSI since taking office. Indeed, in budget 2022, we saw significant increases in student supports, some of which have not seen an increase in many years. By expanding the accessibility of SUSI, we encourage yet more people to pursue their ambitions and passion within the higher education sector.

The Bill sets out a roadmap for the future of higher education and, I believe, marks the most fundamental changes of governance in our institutions in a generation. It will be looked back on in time as a positive and ambitious step forward in our efforts to deliver a broad, high quality, accessible and inclusive education system that provides options and choices for individuals to find their path or, indeed, their passion.

As a member of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education, I look forward to working with the Ministers in the passage of this Bill but also to achieving our collective goals of making the Irish education system as robust and as transparent as possible.

See this speech in context