Sinn Féin spokesperson on Further and Higher Education, Mairéad Farrell TD, has said government needs to wake up to the scale of the university sector funding crisis and act urgently.
Her comments follow a report in the Irish Times today that eight of the 18 publicly funded higher education institutions were in the red last year, with some of the biggest spending concerns currently focused at TU Dublin, University College Cork and University of Limerick.
Teachta Farrell said:
“The university sector is crying out for this funding deficit, first identified in 2016, to be closed. Government must listen and act.
“Government further underfunded universities when they were left short as a result of the recent public sector pay agreement. The universities had to make up the shortfall which impacted them in other recruitment and retention areas.
“Our university sector has seriously aging research equipment and infrastructure. The last major funding of such research equipment was not from the government, but from the philanthropic funds provided by the late Chuck Feeney.
“This isn’t good enough. The government talks about making Ireland a key place to do research and development. It talks about the importance of the sector. And yet we have some of the highest pupil teacher ratios in the OECD. We are seeing further evidence of this government’s habit of making big announcements that they then totally fail to deliver on.
“As the head of one of our universities pointed out, we are facing ‘the risk of a quiet and gradual decline, a slow retreat from competitiveness and attractiveness’. Our current Taoiseach is a former Minister for Higher Education. He should be aware of these long-standing issues and has no excuse for his failure to act.
“A Sinn Féin government would ensure that these issues are finally addressed.”
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