Coalition parties have traded blows over suggestions that further cuts to student fees could be endangered by overspending in the Department of Education.
The Programme for Government commits the Coalition to continue to reduce the student contribution fee over its lifetime, but the matter became a stumbling point last year – and now risks re-emerging.
On Newstalk radio on Tuesday morning, Minister for Further and Higher Education James Lawless was asked about demands from the Department of Public Expenditure that other departments pay to partially backfill an overspending gap in the Department of Education, and reports that could impact plans to reduce student fees.
“It’s too early to say but obviously in this situation at the moment where every other department has to contribute to a levy to support the Department of Education, that places additional challenges for all of our spending plans.”
He said he intended to secure the “best possible deal” in the budget depending on the allowance available to him at budget time.
The Irish Daily Mail reported on Tuesday that Government sources said the levy would hinder the scope for new measures such as grant increases or fee cuts.
The comments drew a pointed response from Fine Gael, whose Minister Hildegarde Naughton runs the Department of Education.
The party’s higher education spokeswoman, Maeve O’Connell, said the next budget “needs to provide additional supports for our hardworking families” including those with students as part of their families.
“I’m disappointed that the Minister is not interested in bringing to Cabinet any reduction in student fees.”
Fine Gael sources are suspicious that the fee reduction is not top of Lawless’s list of priorities, while Fianna Fáil figures were privately critical of O’Connell’s intervention.
Asked if it levies tied Lawless’s hands when it came to bringing about a further reduction, O’Connell said: “Ministers always have choices as to how they’re going to invest the funds that they have.” .
Responding to O’Connell’s comments, Fianna Fáil TD for Louth Erin McGreehan, chair of the Oireachtas higher education committee, said she was “disappointed” by the Dublin Rathdown deputy’s comments which she described as a “solo run”, adding that the programme for government was clear in its intent to cut the fees further.
“She’s a member of the same Government I am part of,” McGreehan said of O’Connell who is deputy chair of the higher education committee.
“I’m disappointed by it; what we do at committee across all parties is really work positively together,” she said.
“We’re all working together for positive things in the higher ed sector and to then come out with this solo run … you raise these things at committee and proactively.”
There were efforts on Tuesday afternoon to defuse the burgeoning row, with Lawless releasing a statement saying he “remains steadfast in his determination” to deliver on programme for government commitments, which O’Connell welcomed.
Meanwhile, Lawless also defended Government plans to introduce a loan scheme for medical students on the condition recipients go on to work in the Irish health service.
The concept, first reported in The Irish Times in February, is being developed against a backdrop of concern that Irish medical graduates are leaving to work overseas.
Lawless said there were a number of issues around graduates going abroad to work. “We need to examine why is it that some of our healthcare graduates, not all by any means, but some, choose to practise in other countries post-qualification. Is there a way through the student supports team that I can incentivise some of them to stay around? I hope so.
“Are there things we can do in the broader health workforce and work experience to incentivise them also? I’m sure that there are. Those are the practical things.”
He told the programme that lower-income students are not pursuing graduate entry medical courses, where fees can be between €15,000 and €20,000 per year.
“They don’t have the means to access the courses. They don’t have the means to pay those kind of fees as graduate entrants. And there’s a gap there. And year on year, you see this being propagated, so the graduate entry courses are becoming the reserve of the more affluent families.”
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