Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I remember when the student contribution charge was brought in. Everybody knew it was fees by another name. Realistically, it is long past time for it to be removed. Instead, what we saw in the last budget, which surprised me, were more one-off measures. We are past the time for that; we need to do better than one-off measures. We need to hear a commitment from the Government that multi-annual funding will be set aside for the permanent removal of this charge in order to allow people to plan for the future. Just like our previous discussion on student accommodation, if people are being told measures are once-off, they are not sure what will happen next year or the year after. It is high time to remove this charge.

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