Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and thank the Government for what it has been doing to ensure the continuation of education, not just at third level but at all levels, during this time of crisis. We are fire-fighting at the moment and to some degree we have put aside consideration of many of the things we would aspire to see happen while we deal with the immediate challenges but there are lessons in these days. I think about how we have been going on and one would relate to the leaving certificate and the progression to third level education, which is increasingly seen as a box-ticking exercise by young people but a very serious and stressful exercise, and a system that seems to be built fundamentally around the needs of third level colleges as they assign courses to people.

I spoke to a highly experienced teacher recently who observed that second and third level education in 21st century Ireland has nothing to do with knowledge and everything to do with skills. We might refine that by saying that it has a lot to do with skills, something to do with knowledge but often has little to do with wisdom. That is because our system is increasingly constructed with employers and multinationals in mind, treating our young people as economic units rather than as individuals whose well-being and personal development matters deeply. While it is true and valid to say we must educate people for economic life we also have to educate people for quality of life. I believe we are in danger of losing sight of that and we need to reflect on that in these days.

So far as the third level educational experience is concerned, the core issue continues to be the big crisis around funding or, as has been described by Trinity Provost, Dr. Patrick Prendergast, the time bomb. I do not quite see the point the way other Senators see it about the need to establish a separate Department for further and higher education. Given that only one page out of the 126-page programme for Government has to do with higher education it seemed it was fairly thin. We can prescind from that, however, because we are where we are now and I have no doubt the Minister will be zealous. That funding issue has to be addressed but I note that the commitments in the 2020 programme for Government were fairly similar to those in 2016, so let us hope there will be movement on that big issue.

An issue on which we need to show courage and curiosity is the question of student loans, which I have brought up in the past. We would be kidding ourselves if we said that the abolition of fees in the mid-1990s did not erode the sense of the value of third level education and cheapen it somewhat as a resource. That is evidenced in our high drop-out rates, which is an incredible 33% for institutes of technology, according to the Higher Education Authority, HEA. We could look at something that would allow students to take out loans for third level education but the repayment of that to be linked to income in the future. We have to have a discussion about that as we go forward because there will not be money for everything.

I am very glad to hear the focus today on student welfare in the current situation. I note the term "blended learning" is being used a good deal. That is putting nice language on the rather sad fact that for the foreseeable future the quality of the student experience will be greatly diminished. I welcome the Minister's student support package around student well-being and mental health. I agree with him about the need for higher education institutes to be flexible around accommodation. I note, for example, the reluctance with which the University of Limerick repaid €3.5 million in rent to students for accommodation that they could not use due to Covid-19.

On the issue of consent, I am conscious of the fact that the frontal lobe of the brain in human beings is not fully developed until the age of 25.I know what the Minister is trying to achieve, but it will be a very thin and ultimately unsuccessful effort to tackle the serious problems of sexual violence and harassment unless we situate that in a wider context about values, human respect and love. We need to be more reflective about the culture of individualism in our society. It will be a long time before we know whether these efforts on consent will be successful. I am concerned that they are not rooted in a sensible and thorough anthropology. We need a more thorough approach to bringing about behavioural change. All of that said, these efforts are laudable and they must be supported.

The Minister was in NUI Galway yesterday. I was surprised to see recently that when NUIG put forward a mandatory requirement for students to sign a pledge to adhere to public health advice as a condition of registration, a breach of which would have been a disciplinary issue within the college, the college was subjected to a campaign of criticism through social media and eventually had to drop it.