Laura Harmon (Labour)

I welcome the Minister. It is welcome to have this discussion in the House this evening.

I want to start with a positive story. There was an article in The Echo today about a woman called Annette Donoghue from Cork and she has gone to college at the age of 81 to study Irish heritage and culture in Cork College of Further Education and Training. That was a powerful story and demonstrated the power of lifelong learning, which has to be intrinsic in our education system. People now do not usually have the one career for their whole lives. They often go back and retrain or decide they want to do something different maybe every decade. This is how we live now and our colleges and universities need to reflect on that.

In relation to funding for higher education, I believe the Minister has a huge opportunity to explore how the sector is funded as a whole and to ensure that we can act on the Cassells report and that we have a proper publicly funded model of higher education because we know now that a qualification, be it in further or higher education, is the same as a leaving certificate may have been in the 1980s or early 1990s. It is almost the expectation now that that is the standard educational attainment for a lot of people. Of course, apprenticeships are included as part of that as well in terms of people's choice.

We have the potential for a Niamh Bhreatnach moment. The late, great Niamh Bhreatnach, former Minister for Education, abolished student fees in the nineties. That paved the way for our economic development, and Celtic tiger years as well, in terms of education and global investment in this country. I believe the Minister has this opportunity now, during his tenure, to abolish student fees again. It was disappointing to see that there was not a commitment to permanently reduce the student fee by €1,000 in this budget. I hope the Minister will commit to decreasing it during the lifetime of this Government, as set out in the programme for Government. I was out last night knocking on some doors in Blackrock in Cork city and I was talked to a family. They were saying how they are deeply affected by the cost of living. They are paying €2,000 in childcare and the extra €500 now in fees. For them, the squeezed middle, they are really feeling this. It is being felt by people as an increase, as opposed to a decrease, on last year.

In relation to housing, I welcome the fact there will be a new student accommodation strategy. It absolutely needs to be delivered on by the end of the year. The sooner we can implement it, the better. Technological universities want to be able to borrow funding. They want to be able to acquire their own accommodation. There are 106,000 students attending technological universities and there is only 0.4% of available on-campus accommodation for those. We had the president of Munster Technological University, Professor Maggie Cusack, in front of the Oireachtas further and higher education committee recently and she said that she believes that housing is the biggest barrier to accessing education in this country. That is a pretty stark statement as to where we are at with housing. There needs to be more joined-up thinking between the Department and that of the Minister, Deputy Browne, in terms of housing. There need to be proper protections for students who are living in digs as well. The rent-a-room relief scheme is obviously welcome but it cannot be just plugging the gap in terms of the availability of accommodation. More purpose-build student accommodation needs to be built in this country. I have introduced legislation to clamp down on predators who advertise rooms in exchange for sex. We know that 5% of international students either have been directly offered or have seen these advertisements. It is welcome that the Deputy Lawless's colleague the Minister for Justice is including that in an upcoming Bill. We absolutely need to make sure that that is outlawed and that they feel the full weight of the law.

Student poverty is real. According to a University College Cork students' union survey, 28% of students said that they have gone to class hungry. I welcome the fact the Minister is looking at the thresholds and that he has made progress there. That is going in the right direction in relation to grants. I know that is at the forefront of the Minister's priorities.On the sector itself, I know the Irish Federation of University Teachers has identified through a survey that 36% of those working in universities say they are in precarious employment. Only 8% of them said they had written contracts. Only 15% of researchers said they were on permanent contracts and 60% said they had unmanageable workloads. This affects the student experience as well as the staff experience. They would say in their own words that higher education is chronically and structurally underfunded. We know that public spending has decreased by 40% in relation to income since the financial crisis years. How will we plug that core funding gap? When will that be done?

I think there was a missed opportunity to abolish the apprentice fee. I know my colleague, Senator Cosgrove, will speak about that.

For every euro spent on further and higher education, there is a return for our economy overall.