Marian Harkin (Sligo-Leitrim, Independent)

I thank the Minister, Deputy Lawless, and his officials for bringing forward this important and innovative legislation, which I fully support. I believe it has huge potential benefits for the further and higher education sectors. I want to thank all the Deputies for their contributions. I think we all are largely agreed that this is a positive move. Yes, there are some queries and there are some nuances around the details, and it is important that we tease them out on Committee Stage and further Stages. The Minister will deal with many of those concerns but I will address a few of them myself.

Before I ever became Minister of State in the Department of further and higher education, I attended many meetings of employer representative groups and education providers, generally organised by IBEC but also other meetings on a regional basis. Time and again, the issue of spending the funds that have accumulated under the NTF arose. All the attendees at those meetings wanted to see this money being used in constructive and innovative ways to support upskilling and reskilling and to provide opportunities and information for those who want to enter employment.

I believe this Bill answers many of those questions and queries and ensures that the use of the fund for the purposes of the original Act remains while also providing a spend on capital expenditure.

Budget 2025 delivered a total NTF funding package of €1.485 billion over a six-year period for the tertiary sector, including €885 million in funding for a core funding package and capital uplift. Funding for higher education was to be increased by a further €150 million by 2030 and it also included one-off current funding for the tertiary sector, including skills and apprenticeships. The budget also included a €600 million capital uplift to enable skills development, including facilities in the areas of healthcare, veterinary skills and further education skills supporting universal access to skills provision and the research sector, including an increase in PhD stipends. This is something for which I advocated in the previous Dáil on many occasions. I am also very pleased to see that we now have a veterinary course in ATU in Letterkenny. This is hugely important because it contributes to the Government's objective of balanced regional development.

I acknowledge the interest in accessing funding from the fund for education and training initiatives. As it stands, the NTF forms part of my Department’s expenditure ceiling and indeed the overall Government expenditure ceiling. The funds being released in the NTF funding package are fully allocated.

The amendments made in this Act are to provide that the NTF can be used to fund capital expenditure on essential projects for reskilling and upskilling of our workforce, which will meet the skills needs of our economy and progress the skills development agenda. However, it is important to note that NTF expenditure is provided for a wide range of skills development schemes, including in the further education and training sector; the higher education sector; enterprise upskilling, including for small and medium enterprise; apprenticeships; and upskilling for community and voluntary organisations. It is important to say that this funding will continue.

I have heard some colleagues speak about a cut in funding to ETBs. All I can say is that budget 2026 saw an additional allocation of €79 million to apprenticeships bringing the total allocation to €411 million in 2026. That is not a cut. That is a hugely significant increase. This amount of money has doubled since 2020. A total of 78 different apprenticeships are on offer at the moment - everything from hairdressing to cybersecurity to accounting technicians to modern methods of construction to welders, plumbers, etc. I will leave it to the Minister to deal with the issues that have been raised.

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