Noel Dempsey (Meath, Fianna Fail)

The two main Opposition parties have said very clearly that they are not willing to make any changes to current policies – as far as they are concerned, the core funding structures are fine as they are. The House should be aware that this marks a major change in position for many Opposition Members of the Oireachtas.

We should look back at the ramshackle way in which the decisions which created the current system were made. In 1995 a major review group reported on third level student support and presented its report to the then Minister for Education. It considered the full range of issues and was particularly concerned to improve access. It very explicitly recommended against the introduction of free fees for those who did not qualify through a means testing arrangement.

In spite of this, the Labour Party decided it wanted to push ahead with exactly this policy, particularly because it hoped that it would help it to retain the various seats it had won in the professional class areas in 1992. The decision of the Labour-Fine Gael-Democratic Left Government to go ahead with that policy was far from unanimous. John Walshe has reported on this in great detail and it forms a significant part of his book on education policy in Ireland.

The most striking aspect is that Democratic Left – remember it – directly opposed the abolition of fees. The then party leader and Minister, Proinsias De Rossa, is recorded as having argued at Cabinet that it would be a regressive decision which would do nothing to help disadvantaged groups. I do not often agree with Proinsias De Ross, MEP, but he was right about that. Fine Gael was also lukewarm but accepted the policy as the price of keeping Labour happy.