A HIGHER Education Authority report on third-level funding was expected before the end of the year, Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn told the Dáil.
“We will not discover new crocks of gold and much of the data has been gathered, but we must get hard information and look at the implications,” he said.
Mr Quinn said it was Labour in government in the 1990s that removed existing anomalies and abolished fees for undergraduate courses.
“In my view, it is not desirable that a new barrier should exist to prevent the socioeconomic groups we are trying to get into the third-level sector from participating,’’ he added.
That was why he had asked the HEA to find ways in which the Government could look at the funding of the third-level sector in order to avoid that possibility.
“I have not changed my values or attitudes in regard to access to third-level education,’’ Mr Quinn added.
The Minister was replying to Richard Boyd Barrett (ULA) who said the Government’s failure to reverse the €500 increase in the student service charge was already a significant betrayal of the promises the Labour party made before the election.
Mr Barrett said he was concerned, as he suspected were many students, about the Minister’s recent comments that there was no such thing as free education and that he would look seriously at how third-level education would be funded.
Mr Barrett added that the pay many students received for weekend work might now come under attack because of the review of the joint labour committees.
“The Minister knows – and if it were six months ago he would be saying what I say – that the introduction of fees would be a major disincentive to enter third-level education, particularly for the less well-off in our society.’’
Mr Barrett said it would also make a mockery of any proposals to develop a knowledge economy to aid recovery.
He urged the Minister to give an assurance that no tuition fees would be introduced, in any shape or form.
Mr Quinn said Mr Barrett must recognise “that we do not live in the world in which he would like to live but in one where this Republic has lost its economic sovereignty and control’’.
“We have lost control of our cheque book,” he added.
“Every fortnight, the governor of the Central Bank must report to Frankfurt to state that our fortnightly returns, in terms of revenue and cost reductions, are meeting targets.’’
Otherwise, said Mr Quinn, “the money that pays the deputy’s and my salaries, and those of everybody else who works in this building, will not come out of the ATM’’.
He added: “Michael Collins, the first minister for finance of this State, had more room to manoeuvre than his successor as minister, Deputy Michael Noonan, has today.’’
Mr Quinn said Ireland was a very unequal society. “The deputy and I share that view,’’ he added.
“However, brains and talent are equally distributed across the population and I want to ensure that those brains and talent, which previously could not get into third-level education because of financial and family backgrounds, are liberated and can participate.’’
