Richard Boyd Barrett: Urges Reuse of Empty Schools, Cuts Student Fees

Yeah, well, I do think, just to follow on that point, because just Deputy Kenny's question actually prompted a thought on me. I mean, there are buildings in the hands of the Department of Education that are just sitting empty. Just a point to one is the old ETB on Ablanna Avenue in Dun Laoghaire is just sitting there empty for the last two or three years, which is an absolute disgrace in and of itself, pre-COVID. But in a situation where we have a desperate need to space, somebody should be sent in, workers should be sent in to refurbish that building to be made available for education, whether third level or second level, as a matter of urgency. And to be honest, in every locality, we should be looking at empty buildings that could be potentially available to give us the extra space we're going to need for both primary, secondary and third level education. So just to make that point to the Minister, I've got a very, one general point I want to make is that with the July stimulus next week, there's a lot of emphasis and understandably so on small and medium enterprise and the need to protect jobs, sustain them and so on. But the stimulus shouldn't be just seen as a private sector thing. In fact, a huge area where there needs to be stimulus is to strengthen and resource our public services, health obviously, but education is another key one, you could say the same about public transport and so on, and they can be both, they're both necessary to deal with the current pandemic, but they are also actually an economic unemployment stimulus. So I just think the government need to be aware of that. My specific question though to Minister Harris, in particular, is on the question of many third level students are facing blended learning, where they've been told they'll only be doing one day of lectures and then four days online. And they are saying, given that that is the case, why should they be paying 3,000 euro in fees or 6,000 if they're doing a master's, that it's simply not justified. In my opinion, those registration fees, which are some of the highest in Europe, aren't justified at all, even pre-COVID, but how does the Minister respond to the call of students to say those fees should be dramatically reduced or indeed abolished, given the diminished lecture hours that students will be doing? Thank you Deputy. Thank you Deputy. And Tara. Deputy Boyd Barrett. Firstly, just to say in relation to the July stimulus, I agree, it very much has to be two-sided, if you like. One side obviously about economic stimulus, but also another about the individual citizen in our country and how we can help them. And I want to assure the Deputy that there will be a focus in the July stimulus on helping get people back to learning, helping get people into apprenticeships and many other ways that we can help people get their lives back on track through utilising our public services, including our further education training and higher education sector. In relation to the issue of student costs, I think this is an area that needs significant overhaul, significant reform. The Programme for Government makes very clear commitments to not increasing the costs. I see Deputy Gannon looked for me to confirm that earlier today. I'm happy to do that. And I do want to look at how we can better support students. My first priority, though, my absolute first priority between now and September is getting colleges back up and running, getting students back into learning. And then we'll obviously have the budgetary process where we can look at the opportunity of how we can further address the costs facing students and the student support that we have in place.