Martin Conway (Fine Gael)

I also seek an urgent debate on education. It was great to see 15,000 or 16,000 students outside Leinster House yesterday. During the Celtic tiger period it was distressing that students were not active in voicing their political views. To a large extent they became focused on monetary issues. However, the fact that 15,000 students were at the Merrion Street gate of Leinster House yesterday spoke volumes. I remember attending student protests in the early 1990s when 20,000 or 25,000 students would march to Leinster House, and they got results. I would like to see an all-encompassing debate on education in which we would look at how we could build relationships with the private sector to see if there were persons who wanted to fund education, such as the likes of Dr. Tony O'Reilly did in UCD in the early 1990s. I would also like to see a step-by-step examination of the bountiful salaries being earned within the education system by the presidents of the various colleges, senior academics, senior lecturers and senior administrators. If we started by cutting their salaries significantly, we could be in a position where we would not have to look at the imposition of extra costs on students and homeowners. In the past decade the Monopoly-type sums earned by professors, senior lecturers, the presidents of colleges, etc. have been a source of outrage. There is no point in starting at the bottom. We need to start at the top and cut the wages of those mentioned significantly.