Student fees “certainly” will not increase in the budget, the Minister for Higher Education has promised.
James Lawless said he instead intended to introduce a new package of supports for those struggling to get to third-level education.
“They certainly won’t be going up,” Lawless said when asked about student fees in Dublin Castle on Tuesday morning.
Last year, Lawless fought a long-running battle within Government over the annual €3,000 student fees, which saw a permanent cut of €500 replacing a temporary €1,000 cost-of-living reduction – meaning that fees rose by €500 a year for many students.
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“My intention will be to continue to reduce them incrementally over successive budgets. But in terms of how much, when, etc, we’re a long way off October yet, so I will be intensely engaging in negotiations over the coming weeks and months.”
Though detailed negotiations on the October budget will not start until after the August break, Ministers are already preparing to argue for increased allocations.
On Wednesday, the Government will public its summer economic statement, setting out the overall budget limits.
“Certainly I’ll be putting together a package for students, which will also, I hope, include targeted measures, looking at particular cohorts, saying: well, who is actually struggling the most? Is it families with multiple children in college at one time? Are there difficulties for people, disabilities? People from particular disadvantaged backgrounds?” Lawless said.
He said that in addition to “I hope, a flat measure on fees, I would also hope to have targeted measures which focus on particular cohorts that need that additional help”.
Lawless was speaking at Dublin Castle, where he is hosting a meeting of EU research and innovation ministers as part of Ireland’s six-month presidency of the Council of Ministers.
Lawless said he is seeking to tap the National Training Fund, which is funded by employers to improve skills and has a surplus of about €2 billion, for additional investment.
“I think if we had a little more flexibility in terms of how we could harness those monies, it would be a great assistance, certainly, to my sector,” he said.
The Minister said when he spoke to the Intel vice-president for engineering at the announcement of a new €5 billion investment in the tech giant’s Leixlip plant last week, “he made the point that, yes, Ireland has a very strong infrastructure, and very strong base in the plant at Leixlip.
“But it’s actually our talent, it’s our engineers, it’s our skills, it’s our technologists that really attract FDI into Ireland. So it’s essential that we continue that pipeline of talent coming through.”
Lawless said that during the presidency he hopes to make progress on the next budget for Horizon, the EU’s fund for research.
He also said there were opportunities for universities and research institutes in the EU’s rapidly expanding budget for security and defence, pointing out he had shifted Ireland’s position on Horizon funding to enable research into “dual use” technologies, which could have both a military or a civilian application.
“So traditionally, in research funds, you had a civilian fund and then you had a defence fund. And a civilian-only fund was technologies that could never have any kind of security application,” he said.
But now “the movement is towards dual use, and that’s for a couple of reasons,” he added.
“The Continent is very aware of the security environment that we’re in, and Ireland is not immune to that either. We see everything from the shadow fleet, to cybersecurity issues, to hybrid threats. Ireland is very much aware of the European concerns, and we share those concerns.
“But also, more practically, it’s increasingly difficult to tell what an application might have. So you develop a new technology ... you don’t know at the outset where it’s going to be used. We look at the space race, the multiple applications that fell from that, and every major project has had multiple spin-offs.”
