Scandalcentral's Blog

Madam,

The December edition of Motley contained an article on 3rd level fees. In that article the Fine Gael party policy was misquoted by the author. The piece suggested that Fine Gael is in favour of a student loan funding mechanism for 3rd level, while insinuating that the party was also in favour of 3rd level fees at point of entry. These claims are both inaccurate and misleading.

Fine Gael believes that 3rd level education should be free at the point of delivery to avoid any undue burden on students or families. This involves abolishing the registration fee which in our view is the re-introduction of third level fees by stealth. We need to ensure that barriers to participation are as low as possible even in the current economic context, in order to ensure that Ireland does create the much talked about “knowledge based economy”

Fine Gael does not believe that graduates should bear the full cost of their education at third level. We think that to ask graduates to do so ignores the societal and economic benefits of third level education. We are proposing a system of deferred contribution – where graduates, once they begin to receive the economic benefit of their education, make a contribution towards the cost that was incurred on their behalf. This will be collected through the PRSI system and will come to no more than 30% of the cost of the graduates degree. All funds raised will be ring- fenced and spent in the 3rd level sector to ensure increased quality of delivery over the coming years.

Other key proposals by our party include: reforming the maintenance grant system which is inadequate both in terms of the level of support it provides to students and in the way in which it is administered. We believe that the system should be reformed so that maintenance grants are adequate, equitable and transparent. Furthermore we believe that the system should be less bureaucratic and administered by a single body.

Education is a right, Fine Gael in Government will seek to maximise participation, by minimising financial barriers to entry to third level.

Our education policy is available at http://www.finegael.org/upload/file/3rdway.pdf

yours etc,