It is important to do something about equality of access and disadvantage but not by disadvantaging others in third level education. Labour's policy is based on the idea that access to education should be universal, and one factor in our educational success, as the OECD report confirms, is that our educational attainment is high. That is due to the underpinning principle in our system of the universal access approach. Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats have played a historic role in this regard. Donogh O'Malley, who was a member of Fianna Fáil but is connected to members of the Progressive Democrats, introduced free second level education. He believed that second level education should be universal and that has been very successful in terms of our educational achievements. Similarly, the Labour initiative in bringing in free access to third level education has also been successful as shown by the reports of the Action Group on Access to Third Level Education which were a significant factor in changing the Government's mind – at least I hope they were. The abolition of fees has resulted in more people entering third level education and it reversed falling participation rates in certain lower middle class sectors of society. The basic Labour Party philosophy is that if one accepts that society will benefit from investment in education the next step is to have universal access and to properly fund our educational system to make it successful.