Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We discussed this last week and a number of us were becoming ever more disillusioned with the response from the Government on this matter. This is a very reasonable amendment. I cannot see any reason to object to it apart from the Government not being bothered to send it back to the Dáil, as Senator Norris has said.I bumped into the president of the Union of Students in Ireland today as I was going about my work. I could see how disappointed he was in how the Government is dealing with this. Students in the institutes of technology are anxious to see if the Government will listen to the most reasonable of requests. The message coming from the Government is that it does not matter how reasonable the request is because it is just not going to listen. That is the most depressing thing; regardless of what the request is, we have a Government that simply will not listen. That is the message it is sending out to some of the brightest of our young people who are coming through third level education. What a depressing prospect that is. While I hope the Government has a change of mind, I must say I am not optimistic.