Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The difficulty in this case was the amount of money lost by the students. Many of them paid their fees up front and lost a significant amount of money. It is the case that businesses fail. For example, driving schools are licensed by the State and if they fail we do not compensate everyone who did not receive the lessons they paid for. Shops, restaurants, hotels, are all licensed by the State and people are not compensated when these go out of business, nor do they seek compensation. What is different in this case is the amount of money. Even if the IAA determined at a certain point that PTC was financially unsound, all it could have done would be to shut it down. The students would still have lost their money. In my view the only solution in the long term is either an insurance or a bonding scheme or what is now much more the practice whereby people pay fees monthly or quarterly. Very few schools, if any, demand fees up front.