Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State. I am immediately reminded of the important contribution his father made when Minister for Education in the late 1960s, not merely in implementing free second level education as announced by Donogh O'Malley but also in setting up the institutes of technology and the NIHEs. A very important factor in our economic success has been the expansion of both second and third level education, particularly since the late 1980s, which was initiated by another relative of the Minister of State when she was Minister for Education. The large-scale expansion served economic as well as social purposes.

As the heads of universities are apt to remind us at regular intervals there are considerable financial constraints, despite the fact that third level institutions benefited from an enormous amount of capital investment, particularly over the past ten years. I am glad to say that investment continues, some of it from private sources and some from public. There is clearly deep dissatisfaction with the decision of the rainbow coalition to abolish fees. It was not a very bright decision but it is a political reality and is not reversible, no matter what arguments are put forward. It is like the arguments made in the 1980s that all objective reasoning demanded the reintroduction of domestic rates. The abstract arguments may have been very cogent but it was and remains utterly impossible to do so politically.

In the competition for resources it is not always obvious that third level education has a higher priority than, for example, first level, even though the per capita spending at third level is already much more than at first level. Financial constraints cause incredible insecurity among those interested in pursuing a university or lecturing career and I have sympathy with such people, some of whom are members of my wider family.

Relatively speaking, the income and status of university staff have fallen, possibly as a result of expansion. It is not surprising that a situation has developed throughout western Europe over the past 30 or 40 years, whereby the best academics at a certain stage in their careers cannot resist the better funding opportunities on the other side of the Atlantic. Not only Ireland but the entirety of Europe is at a disadvantage in this matter, although various countries have tried to address the problem in different ways. For example, across the water, problems are arising with third level unions over the issue of top-up fees.

Research councils for sciences and humanities, which are our means of addressing this issue, have undoubtedly brought about improvements to the situation through requiring people to compete for projects and funding. We also have a reasonably healthy situation in that a substantial amount of private research funding is available to colleges and universities. Many institutions are well geared towards applying for EU grants and to foundations such as the Wellcome Trust for scientific research moneys.

However, the problem remains that, because their employees can easily move to other countries or earn more in the private sector, Irish universities have to compete. Science, in particular, is a universal field. A lot of thought is required on how we can become more competitive and the Minister for Education and Science is concerned that only one lrish university appears in the Financial Times' top 100 list of third level institutions. People who have done well out of this economy — the commercial barons of the 20th and 21st centuries — should be encouraged, like medieval barons, to fund substantial facilities that will bear their names in perpetuity. However, the right to bear a name should not be sold too cheaply by colleges because only a limited number of such opportunities arise. This practice is ingrained in the United States, where companies and rich benefactors fund facilities all the time.

Medical education here has been more focussed on earning money for colleges than on training doctors to work and serve in Ireland. Hence, a large percentage of students in some of the royal colleges come from outside the country and will probably not remain here. It is a question of balance.

High points are not necessarily related to an aptitude for becoming a doctor. The system of selection has been very crude to date, so I welcome the proposals for change.