Ulick Burke (Fine Gael)

I wish to comment on the Government amendment, which fails to recognise the motion. The controversy that has arisen is of the making of the Minister for Education and Science. When he gave an interview to The Irish Times last September in which he floated kites as to his intentions, people in the media and education thought they were witnessing a visionary Minister for Education and Science. His idea for raising a new source of revenue within education by reintroducing third level fees was tempered by the suggestion that this would be used to increase the finances and resources available to the disadvantaged to access third level. We now know that has failed.

One of the Minister's first efforts in education was to increase substantially the college registration fee, which became a burden on the very group he was supposed to encourage and whose problems he was purporting to alleviate. That fee was increased by 69% because the Minister could not introduce fees elsewhere. It was a huge imposition on many families and was followed by an insensitive reduction of €36 million in the Estimates for support mechanisms to allow the disadvantaged access third level, such as the retention of school initiatives, building improvements, information technology research and development and teacher recruitment. Some €5 million was taken from programmes aimed at attracting school leavers from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds into third level and €6 million from planned initiatives to reduce the schools drop-out rate.