Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome my fellow Ulsterman, the Minister, Deputy McHugh, to the House. There can hardly be a Minister who is more aware of the awful implications of Brexit than him and anyone from the Border are will have an acute consciousness of the issue and significant concern about it.

I understand what Senator Gavan is trying to achieve and nobody would object to the underlying principle of the amendment. Nobody would object to bringing as many students south as possible, as suggested by Senator Norris.Before I make my substantive contribution I want to make a small point about my experience of SUSI. It is not an issue and I know that Senator Gavan is not suggesting that there is an issue but while we are here it is worth acknowledging the wonderful work of SUSI. The agency is extraordinarily responsive to my office and to constituency queries. I can tell the Minister that I find SUSI to be performing at a very high level. We hope it continues.

I put it to Senator Gavan that fundamentally the apparatus is already in place. SUSI is already in place and working at full capacity. It is considerably resourced. It deals with this kind of scenario on a day-to-day basis with students from Northern Ireland and the UK and it does so very effectively. It is my contention that processes are already there, and I assume the Minister, Deputy McHugh - who will speak for himself quite adequately - will be happy to say that were things to change and were more resources needed, they would be forthcoming. While the objective of the amendment might be good, it has already been achieved and there is no need for a particular amendment to say what is already in place.