James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)

For clarity, I am absolutely not talking about bringing in extra fees. Fees will only go down on my watch. To be crystal clear, fees will go in one direction, and that is down, as long as I am in office. However, it is important to discuss the academic work and the research that has been done. That is what the Deputy asked about in her question. She asked what assessments had been carried out. I put an assessment before her. She does not like it. That is fine but she cannot ask the question and then not like the answer. If she has access to other research or assessments, I would welcome it if she wanted to share them with me. I will take them on board. There is a dearth of assessment on this issue and a very limited set of publications. Those that do exist would suggest that targeted measures are preferable to universal measures in getting money to people who need it most, namely, the low income families and the working class families the Deputy mentioned. If we were to do more on fees this year, in the scope of a limiting pot of money and a limited pool of resources, we could not have done other things. Is the Deputy suggesting I should not have not increased maintenance grants and thresholds, should not have put money into students with disabilities and student supports and instead did a bit more on fees for higher and middle income earners? I am not sure if that is her position. If it is, I would be interested in hearing about it.

I believe we have tried to do both. It is what we call progressive universalism, which people like Gordon Brown have espoused. I subscribe to it myself. We tried to do both. We have a twin track whereby we have given universal supports to everybody but we then layer that on top of targeted measures that activate people who would not otherwise access education.

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