Brian Hayes (Fine Gael)

I am pleased to contribute to the debate and I support the motion. We give lip service to the notion of access to education but I wish to raise the issue of adult education. Our focus on third level education is obsessed with those aged between 18 and 21. That is where funding and support are focused. If one adds up the total amount in subvention given by the State to an 18 year old who goes to college full-time, it is approximately €80,000 when one considers tuition fees, ongoing investment in the capital programme of the college and so on. However, there is not a cent for someone who leaves school at the age of 18 to go to work but decides, at the age of 25, to go back to education for a specific work-related course. I have come across countless examples of people of 24 or 25 years who want to go back to education either full or part-time but there is nothing for them. There is complete disparity between the funding given to 18 to 21 year olds and everyone else.

Everyone should be entitled at birth to an educational credit, money allocated to them by the State, which they can use at any time because our obsession with 18 to 21 year olds going to college is completely unfair. The review should focus on adult education, on how those in work can get back to education and on providing supports for those people. I specifically propose that every citizen should be given an educational credit they can use at any time of life, whether they are aged 60 or 26. The review should address this issue.

The funny notion which equates success with going to college should be challenged. The notion that everyone should go to college is bizarre, as is the idea that if everyone wants to go to college it shows how developed is our society. I was lectured in sociology by the very eminent Fr. Micheál Mac Gréil, who wrote Prejudice and Tolerance in Ireland before writing Prejudice and Tolerance in Ireland Revisited 20 years later. He said that if students wanted to know who they were going to marry, they should look beside them because education in Ireland was a form of class endogamy. He said students ended up marrying those sitting to their left or right in lecture theatres and he was right.

The middle class want to send their children to college because it is perceived as the successful route. It puts terrible pressure on people at 17 or 18 years of age to think that success for them, their family and their peer group is solely related to going to college. That does not lead to rounded individuals at all because people have no choice. The big determinant about going to college is neither fees nor the level of support offered to young adults, but peer group pressure. Huge pressure is put on people in pockets of Dublin because all their friends are going to college. They have no choice and if they do not get the particular course they are looking for then, they must do another year in school to get even higher points. Terrible pressure is put on children to get to the best colleges.

This works the other way also. I recently spoke to a constituent from a disadvantaged area who told me he left college primarily because he was slagged every time he went back to his own community. People in that community were not used to their children going to college and life was made difficult for him.

I have never bought the fees argument. Even if one brought back tuition fees one would do nothing for access to education because the big driver is peer pressure — the expectations of one's peers and parents about where one will end up. There is an educational snobbery about college in Ireland which is most unhealthy. Some of the best courses at the cutting edge of industry are in the institutes of technology, which have never received the recognition they deserve. This should be examined in the review.

The university sector has done very little to help children from disadvantaged communities get to college. Trinity College is right next to some of the most disadvantaged communities in the country, but what has it done to get children from those communities, a stone's throw away, into Trinity? Lip service is paid to disadvantage. I am aware of some access programmes being put in place but the university sector, irrespective of the Government, has an obligation to help children from those communities to stay in college. We should accept that one of the real reasons people leave college is because they are not socially accepted and because college is the preserve of the middle classes, to go back to the argument of class endogamy.

The universities have a huge role to play in reaching out to communities and in giving real supports to children from those communities who want to stay in college. Much of this comes down to attitudes in the university sector and I hope some of these points are taken up by the review group. I support the meritocratic approach to education. Those who want to go should go, but people should not be forced into education. Some of the best brains in Irish business never went near third level education, thank God, and that is one of the reasons they are so successful. We should not get hung up on the notion of success being equated to participation in college. I ask the OECD to consider that point.