Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

Does the Minister of State accept there is an unfairness here? There are students this year who, with a given set of results, will not achieve a college place they would have achieved last year or the year before or whatever. There is a fundamental unfairness here. I accept that within this artificial scarcity - an effectively fake market being created for the points system - it is difficult to have solutions that do not unfairly disadvantage someone but that entirely gets to the point that the problem is a lack of investment in our third level system. We have a much lower percentage of GDP in third level education than other EU countries and then there is this artificial scarcity.

The points system has created a lucrative industry of grinds and private schools, systematically enshrining inequality in our education. The answer is to have open access to university and let everyone into university, secondary school and primary school.

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