Brendan Ryan (Labour)

As my colleague, Senator Tuffy, obviously has a lot more to say on this subject than me, I am now embarrassed that I am the cause of her having to finish her speech somewhat earlier. I apologise to her, but I had not known she would finish on such an interesting issue. However, I want to highlight a few issues, which I will do in almost bullet point fashion due to the limited time.

Without a doubt third level education is expensive and will become more so — medical education is perhaps at the pinnacle of that expense — but the real question for the Minister is who will pay for that and, in particular, who will pay for postgraduate education. Will we see the gradual return of fees, given the developments that are taking place, to which I will revert in a moment? I advise the Minister to be very wary of the universities' propaganda. I say that without equivocation, as an advocate of the other side of the dual system in third level education. The universities' conversion to issues such as relevance was forced on them by the success of the institutes of technology. The universities did not believe they were entangled in that world until the ITs began to generate a whole new vision of what constitutes third level education. Now that the universities have got their act together, I advise the Minister not to be seduced by their flowery language.

In engineering education — which I will talk about a bit, as it is important for the country's future — there is now a tendency, which began in the United Kingdom, for the masters degree to be considered the acceptable level of qualification. I have the good fortune to be a member of the profession of chemical engineering, which is accredited by both the Institute of Engineers of Ireland and the IChemE. Two third level institutions in Ireland — UCD and Cork Institute of Technology — have received accreditation that recognises their BEng qualification as equivalent to an MEng in Britain, but the two other universities that teach chemical engineering have not received that accreditation. The issue is complex and difficult, but my personal belief is that a strong case exists for rationalisation in third level education. The idea that two small chemical engineering departments should be located down the road from each other, as we have in Cork, is ridiculous. The funding agent, which is the Government, should knock heads together and require a rationalisation. My understanding and experience of the Department of Education and Science — I have no idea what are the views of the current Minister — is that rationalisation usually means that the university grabs everything that is attractive and leaves other institutions to do the other bits, but that is not what I mean by rationalisation. Rather, we need a putting into practice of the rhetoric about ITs being equal but different. Unless that happens, we will have serious problems.

On the issue of how third level education should be paid for, the Minister should not believe too much of the universities' propaganda about their wonderful fundraising capacity. They are very good at talking about the large amounts of private funding they have raised, but the vast majority of that funding came from one foundation. That foundation's first rule is that it must take the initiative, so I do not know how the universities can claim the credit for obtaining €600 million from Atlantic Philanthropies. The universities had nothing to do with that because Atlantic Philanthropies specifically forbids institutions from approaching it. If universities approach the foundation directly, Atlantic Philanthropies will not have anything more to do with them.

The only way to fund third level education is through general taxation. Introducing fees would immediately create a huge gap between the rich and the not so rich. Introducing significant fees into medicine would immediately prohibit large sections of society from accessing that education. Any sort of universal fees-based system for masters degrees, which I believe will become the standard qualification within the next ten years, will also exclude people. Given the evidence that the abolition of fees in the institutes of technology has produced significantly increased levels of participation, it would be a pity if either ideology or a shortsighted view of where money should be spent resulted in us reintroducing a dual system under which people first gained a basic and valueless first degree and were then unable to continue further because of the level of fees that had been introduced for later stages.