Shane Cassells (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Minister on his appointment and I wish him well in his new position. I know his capabilities. He is a very reforming politician. I am delighted this new Department is now being established. I acknowledge what the Minister of State has told the House in respect of the €168 million package of supports. That is welcome.As Senator Ruane said, it is only another step along the path towards what is required in this sector. Crucially, this Department will put a dedicated focus on the sector. During the previous Dáil, we had numerous debates on the issue of the third level sector and higher education but it always seemed to happen on the margins of some other related topic. We now have a dedicated focus on a sector that is crucial to our advancement and continued growth as a nation. That is the justification for this Department if people are looking for it.

The challenges facing the Minister and this sector were set out in the report published in 2016. At the time of the publication, the author, Peter Cassells, set out quite clearly the urgency of the funding that was required. He suggested €600 million in additional funding per annum until 2021. Since 2015, there has only been a cumulative additional €350 million of funding whereas the report set out that we needed €600 million per annum. At the time it was released, Mr. Cassells stated that immediate action was needed to resolve the funding crisis in the third level sector. What is frightening is not only the lack of action taken in response to his recommendations, but it took continued requests of the Department from the Joint Committee on Education and Skills for an assessment to be conducted of the potential costs of actions suggested in the report were they to be acted upon. An assessment of the report by the European Commission then commenced last year and it is not expected to report until the end of this year. It is scandalous. There has been an lack of urgency in the assessment of what it would take to address the problems. The report, when it was published, set out the urgency that was required but, four years later, the Department and the European Commission are still assessing matters.

We must grapple with the thorny issues that were in that report, particularly those relating to fees. Ireland's student contribution fee of €3,000 per annum are the second highest in the EU. That is prohibitive for many families. The options that were set out were to abolish that fee, to leave it as it is but increase the subvention to the third level sector and increase State funding, or introduce an income contingent loan system. Nobody was seriously considering the loan system and, as Mr. Jim Miley, the director general of the Irish Universities Association, said, it was a cop-out that would have let the Government off the hook. The fact that we now have a dedicated Department, with figureheads such as the Minister of State and the Minister to deal with these issues and make these calls is significant given the lax attitude of the Department of Education and Skills in the past four years.

As I have said, as did Senator Ruane in her contribution, the Joint Committee on Education and Skills issued a public statement in January 2019 rebuking the Department for not providing an assessment of the potential costs of the recommendations in the Cassells report and making those recommendations a reality. The committee wrote to the Department seeking those assessments for two years. On that basis, I fundamentally disagree with the position that Sinn Féin articulated earlier to the effect that the party does not see the need for this particular Department. It is regrettable and depressing in its short-sightedness. The narrative that was used in arguing against the Department was that the people expected Sinn Féin to oppose it. Mother of God, that is pitiful, weak and lacking in imagination. We may have come to expect nothing else, but it was abhorrent that the narrative used to oppose the establishment of this Department was that the people expected Sinn Féin to oppose it.

Fianna Fáil certainly will not oppose it. We will support the establishment of this Department to drive the imagination, education and the growth of this nation. This will be done by people who have imagination, drive and passion to see a society in which everyone can achieve and attain the reality of third level education so that the advancement of our nation can also become a reality. I wish the Minister of State well with his work and look forward to collaborating with him and his Department to ensure the vision I have outlined become a reality.