James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, for taking this Topical Issue matter. I have been in touch with the Department for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, and have spoken to the Minister, Deputy Simon Harris, directly and know he is engaging on the issue and recently met students involved. I acknowledge from the outset that the Government is engaging on the matter.

The issue I raise relates to Maynooth University in my constituency of Kildare North. It is a very successful, large and growing university that is an important dot on the map of the national education infrastructure at higher level. It is a university I have a significant amount of time for. My daughter recently attended it and I have been there on many occasions. The institution is progressive in many ways, not least in its commitment to providing a broad education. Students are not educated in silos of certain disciplines but they are encouraged and are given a broad subject choice at the outset. However, it has fallen short on one important item, which has exercised and concerned the student body greatly and understandably so, that is the issue of the levy.

There was a referendum in the university in the late 1990s to impose a levy on students. The introduction of the levy was done with a view to expand the facilities on the campus thereby creating a student centre; providing greater student amenities and facilities; developing a sports and community engagement cluster; developing an arts and cultural quarter; and providing a basic and fundamental requirement of a student centre in which students could gather, sit, meet and chat with other students and have lunch. University is not just about lectures. It is about college life and the public square. The conversations that happen on beanbags, benches or couches are an integral part of the student and learning experience, which is part of the educational philosophy. More rudimentarily, it is a place to get in from the rain and the cold and have some lunch. It is somewhere to go and to gather. It is a pretty rudimentary requirement.

The students have paid for it. Speaking as the parent of a student, I have paid for it indirectly through my daughter. Many students and parents have paid this levy for many years. The money has been gathered into a fund. We do not know where that fund sits or what its purpose is. The college announced recently that the student centre will not now to be built and that the plans have changed. It is a move in bad faith. The students contributed in good faith for many years. They created a fund, the purpose of which, through a referendum of the student body at the time, was that a student centre would be created, as well as the other arts, cultural and sporting hubs I mentioned. That has now not happened. The money was gathered, but the flip side of the coin, namely, that the student centre would be built, is now not being delivered on.

Students have now been told it will not be delivered. They are very exercised about this, and rightly so. Niall Daly, the president of the student body, recently led a walkout on campus of the students in protest. He has engaged with the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Deputy Harris. He has had engagement with Dr. Eeva Leinonen, the college president. It is not good enough.

I know this is not a Government issue. The Government is not the governing body of NUI Maynooth. However, the Government has a role to play in engaging with all stakeholders. It needs to put it very firmly to Maynooth University that it cannot do this and that it is not good enough to collect levies over a number of years for a student facility that is then not delivered, in particular from a student body, given that the latter comprises people of limited means who struggle at the best of times. That is a breach of faith. I ask the Government to intervene and make its views very clearly known to the college authorities.

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