Tom Clonan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit go dtí an Teach. I wish to raise the shortfall in funding for our higher institutes of education and third level sector, which is at €307 million. I welcome the additional allocation of €60 million in the budget yesterday. That is a very welcome development. Last year, it was only €40 million. If we are to continue at that rate, however, it will take up to a decade to address the shortfall in third level funding.

I want to specifically address the impact that is having on one particular university, namely, Trinity College Dublin, TCD. It is in the heart of the city. People pass by it every day but do not realise that it is actually part of the fabric of the city and the republic. A total of 22,000 students attend TCD just down the road. Unfortunately, however, because of some of the lowest capitation grants in the OECD, it has one of the highest student to lecturer ratios in the European Union. The average throughout the OECD is 17 students per lecturer. In TCD at the moment, it is 23:1.

I went to Trinity College in 1984 when the country was an economic basket case. Obviously, I was only 11 or 12 at the time. The country was an economic basket case and we had mass emigration. However, it was better funded in the 1980s than it is now. We really have to be cognisant of the impact this is having. Trinity College has been there for 431 years in the heart of the city. It is part of the engine of Ireland's economic recovery. To that end, I would highlight institutes like the centre for research on adaptive nanostructures and nanodevices, CRANN, which is a world-leading centre for nanotechnology and nonodevices. It is making a real material contribution to Irish economic outputs both at home and abroad. Then, we have institutions like the Trinity College institute of neuroscience, which is doing groundbreaking work and making over-the-horizon discoveries in the area of neuroscience. We all know somebody who has either a Parkinson's or dementia-related illness. It is something that impacts every family in the State. One that is very close to my heart is the Trinity St. James's cancer institute, which is carrying out pioneering research into individualised and sometimes gene-based therapies to deal with cancers. We are all probably aware at this stage of the great strides that are being made but they are being made because of institutes like that. I think of the gross blunt treatment of radiation treatment and chemotherapy that has been used in the past, which did not work for everybody. In particular, I think of somebody like my sister, Pauline, who passed away at the age of 43 from breast cancer, and my mum who passed away from cancer. The cancers they had are very treatable today. They would be alive today were it not for the treatments that were available at the time. They were unlucky with the very aggressive tumours they had. This is the kind of work Trinity College is doing.

With the massive budget surpluses we have, it really behoves the Government to invest in TCD and the other institutes of higher education to meet that shortfall. We are the only English-speaking country in the EU. Ireland, and Dublin, should be a destination of choice for massive international investment in terms of the arrival of researchers, but also research funding coming not just from the research grant agencies in the EU and domestically but also from private industry. They want to innovate. They want to see entrepreneurs. It is not just the economy that would benefit but the whole of Irish society.

Finally, the student experience is so important. This is mental health week. I heard the Minister of State speak about it very eloquently. Our student population in Trinity College is really suffering. The student experience is not what it used to be. That investment would really help that experience.