Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

If you are sitting at home and having to find €3,000, you do not care what the Government calls it. It is effectively a fee in the sense that it is a bill that must be paid. If you have more than one child in college at the same time, as many people do, the impact is very real. The cost of going to college is, of course, even more expensive if students have to move out of home. I am acutely aware of the issue.

What we have done this year, and it has been quite a good process, is publish the options paper. We have put out for everyone, including the Deputy, to see how much it would cost to do A, B or C and the variety of different options. It explores what the Minister of the day can do if he or she receives a certain amount of funding. That is an attempt to have an honest discussion. It has enabled stakeholders, student bodies, access officers and others to feed into that discussion.

There is now downward pressure on registration fees, though. Last year was the first year that we saw fees reduced in any way for many years. The only time that fees used to get mentioned in this place for the last 20 odd years was when they were going up. The fees last year were effectively €2,000 for anybody doing a full-time undergraduate course. They have been permanently reduced by €500 for anyone with a household income of less than €100,000, and we have a budget in two weeks' time where we can see what more we can do in a variety of ways in supporting students.

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