Feargal Quinn (Independent)

During the good years in the economy I often found myself at retail functions throughout the world and as soon as people heard I was from Ireland, I was asked how we had succeeded in building such a strong economy. I had a list of five or six items, of which the first was always that we had continued to invest in education, even during the tough times. Even in these tough times we need to continue to invest in education.

I very much welcome the new system to replace the one that has been in place since the 1960s. While the streamlining of the system will bring benefit to students, I am worried about the additional staffing and resources which will be required to introduce the unified grants scheme, especially given the pressures on the public finances. I ask the Minister of State to elaborate on whether there are enough staff available to administer the grants scheme. If not, surely we are back to square one.

I welcome the creation of an independent appeals body, but I am somewhat concerned about the length of time to deal with appeals. Surely a waiting time of 45 days is too long, especially for a student starting university. Could we reduce the red tape and cut this figure to approximately two weeks?

I believe section 8 of the Bill does not include private colleges as being eligible to participate in the grants scheme. Should we not consider the student rather than the college when administering the scheme? I realise that not all educational institutions can be eligible, but some may see this as a form of discrimination.

The increase in online education courses will also need to be taken into account, if not in this Bill, in the near future. The question as to whether grants can be given to those doing an online course needs to be asked as this seems to the way of the future. It could be said oral, video and interactive delivery represent a natural extension of the traditional textbook and it is becoming more prevalent. Who would have thought some of the best universities in the world such as Georgetown in the United States would now be offering a multitude of online courses? In addition, there is the renaissance of the Open University in Britain which started to make lectures available to download from iTunes in 2008. More than 30 million items have been downloaded since.

Increasing numbers of undergraduates will likely choose to save money by living at home while they study, allowing part-time students to earn some money to ease their financial burden when not studying. Is there not a benefit in studying and working at the same time, allowing students to apply theoretical knowledge to solve real-life problems? I believe part-time students are not covered in the Bill. However, I welcome the provision to allow certain part-time courses to be included in the student grants scheme in the future, of course subject to resources.

There may also be cost savings in the case of online education. Hibernia College, the private teacher training college, has been providing online courses for a number of years. In the past ten years it has trained approximately 4,000 primary teachers through its online postgraduate programme who have not cost the State one cent. This compares with an annual €40 million price tag for the running of St. Patrick's College and Mary Immaculate College. Surely we should be looking to provide more support for such private colleges. The University of Phoenix, the largest private education provider in the United States, increased enrolments from 384,000 to 455,000 in just one year. This has been done without any increase in the number of buildings. It is able to use electronic means of communicating and lecturing, a subject on which we should have a debate. Last year I was asked to address via television link at NUI Galway a group of commerce students in six countries, including Russia, United States and France. They were able to ask me questions and I was able to answer them. Technology can be used in so many ways nowadays.

Perhaps employers should get more of a say on what they might consider as desirable attributes instead of completely relying on the academic scene. This is not to say there should not be education for education's sake — Cardinal Newman had strong views on that. If higher education was purely driven by businesses, they would fail to understand how philosophy graduates such as President Barack Obama and Mr. George Soros could earn a living. However, business and education can work in tandem.

I have also mentioned previously how there is a €4 billion export opportunity for Ireland in terms of attracting foreign students here to study. Just look at the success of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, which has 3,500 students, 70% of whom are non-Irish. The students create jobs, for instance, the College of Surgeons in Ireland has approximately 800 staff, and it is estimated each student spends about €8,000 locally per year. As an English-speaking country, we should be able to ramp up our efforts to attract many more such students here.

Perhaps less often mentioned is the licensing of our education services abroad or the exporting of them through on-line means. In Doha, the capital of Qatar, for instance, there are branches of campuses of a number of universities from the United States, including Cornell, Georgetown and Texas A&M. The Sorbonne in Paris has set up a campus in Abu Dhabi. The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, long open to foreign students, has set up branches in Malaysia, Bahrain and Dubai. There is much potential and there is much more that other Irish institutions such as UCD, Trinity College or renowned second level or third level schools could do.

I wish the Minister well with the Bill which reduces bureaucracy and, hopefully, will reduce waiting time for students. I hope there will be no further delay, especially as students, like so many, are facing financial difficulties.

There are other steps that can be taken in education. Returning to second schools, the three months' holiday is unsustainable. It came about when students were needed on farms 50, 60 or 100 years ago. It will not be easy to address, but it really does not make sense. In Japan, students in second level education get 16 days holidays a year. I am sure this will not be popular with teachers, who I am aware vote in the university panel in the Seanad, but there is little doubt that we can learn a great deal. There is much we can do. In Germany, for instance, second level schools finish at 1.30 p.m., but I note the effort that goes in afterwards into mathematics and languages, on of the areas where we really are quite poor. We must find some way of encouraging and developing our students, for instance, making it fun to learn mathematics and languages. There are new methods of teaching language.

When I visited a school recently it was interesting to ask the young women there what they intended to do. The teachers told me 90% of the young women there wanted to be hairdressers or opt for some other such scheme. They were not looking, as those in other countries do, at being able to develop and lift themselves up into new and better opportunities. If we are going to invest in the future, we really must encourage young people to invest their time, energies and brains in being able to concentrate particularly on languages, mathematics and science. If we do that, we will find a way through so that when people in years to come will ask how Ireland succeeded, we will give the same answer as I have been giving for the past 15 years, that there were a number of reasons, the first of which was that we continued to invest in education.

I congratulate the Minister on this step. I believe it is the correct direction. Let us ensure it happens.