Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach can kiss goodbye to the votes of 60,000 leaving certificate students. As far as they are concerned they have been betrayed by the Minister for Education and the Government and they are not wrong. These students are a credit to themselves for the way they have campaigned, lobbied, gone on radio and protested. They gave the Government every chance to listen but it has decided not to do so. To add insult to injury, the Government is now forcing students to compete between themselves for a limited number of places at third level. The CAO deadline is today. It is bad enough to do that at any time but worse again in a pandemic year. I put it to the Taoiseach that his Government should invest heavily in third level to train the extra nurses, doctors, teachers, apprentices and others we need and offer far more college places next year for our leaving certificate students.

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