Rose Conway-Walsh Demands Transparency on Extra College Places

Yeah, thank you, Cathaoirleach, thank you, Minister. I just want to go back around, because you're right when you say that students and third-level institutions want to know that we're doing everything possible to increase the number of places, because we have predicted grades again this year, and we need to make as many places available as possible at third-level institutions. But what they really want to know is transparency around the numbers. And sorry, Adonik, I see you there, so if you want to come in, I didn't realize that you were injured, I can't. Unfortunately, we cannot allow Deputy O'Leary because he's not on the campus of that. Sorry, I just didn't want to. My apologies, Adonik. No, Minister, in the 5,000 places that were allocated last year, how many of those were actually taken up? How many of them were used? I'd have to get you a breakdown on that. I wouldn't have that information available, but I would, if the implication, I'm not suggesting it's an implication, if what you're trying to get under the bonnet of is, did we fund places that weren't taken up, or indeed provide funding that didn't match with places? I think it's highly unlikely, considering we had a very, very intensive engagement with our universities and our institutes of technology to try and match the extra demand arising from calculated grades. And indeed, then again, had to do it again in terms of the error that the students had got an uplift from that. But what we are doing this year is mapping out what you say. We now have knowledge from the CAO as to where the extra demand is likely to be. So some courses are gone down. Teaching, for example, journalism has gone massively up. So we're trying to actually match the funding for extra places to where the demand is. And that's the engagement that's going on through the month of April with the institutions, with the HEA, the CAO, and my department. Yeah, I think it's often important that we know, like from last year, that we know how many were taken up, that we know what were the courses that there was the over demand in, because that is the way that it was referred to in terms of the pressure that students have been under. That is a way of alleviating pressure is to make sure that there are extra places in the right courses, in the high demand courses, and that that feeds to the colleges as well. So if there's infrastructure that they need, if there's extra tutors that they need, that they're in those subjects and that they're in those courses, we really need to ensure that that happens. So would you know how many extra tutors were employed, say last year, within the third level institutions? We wouldn't have that information to hand with us today in relation to the discussion on the revised estimates, but we can certainly get that for you through the HEA. There's no issue with that at all. But I mean, we wouldn't have that level of granularity for the discussion on vote 45. I suppose in the broader thing, what I need to make sure is that when we're announcing money and we're doing the estimates and all that, that we have followed through to make sure that the outcomes of that make a real difference to students and to the third level institutions to follow through. Sure. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, Deputy. I think that's entirely reasonable and entirely correct. But I also think there are very clear ways of measuring it. So we know, for example, how many people took up a place last year through the CAO through round one. We saw the increase in the number of students getting a level six and seven offers. So there's no doubt whatsoever that more students went to college this year than did the previous year. So I think that is a point worth actually making. So we are able to map these things out. There's another figure that I think is also important. We know that every year around 50% of students get their first place and around 80% of students get one of their top three choices. And we saw that metric maintained again this year as well, which I think is another suggestion that the extra place has made a very real and meaningful difference to getting students into college. So more students got a college place this year than ever before. And this year, more students will get a college place again. But it is true. And I think your point is true. It's not always possible to match extra places to those areas in which there is most demand. And sometimes those reasons are non-financial. Sometimes those reasons do relate to things around placements. And that's why we are working across government to try and see if there's a scope to increase not just places, but also placements for courses that require be it a clinical placement, a teaching placement and the likes. Okay. Now, just in relation to, and this is for the other minister, given the revenue and the surplus of the National Training Fund, is it not now the time to invest in apprenticeships to really drive up those numbers, to let the apprenticeship be a driving force in the recovery from COVID? So is there anything in the revised estimates that would help to deal with a huge backlog of apprentices waiting for the off-the-job training that stands, I think, about 6,928, with over 1,800 waiting for over a year? Is there anything within the revised estimates for that? Thanks, Deputy, for your question. Later this week, there will be an announcement by myself and Minister Harris in relation to providing capital funding for the provision of apprenticeships in the order of 20 million euros. But suffice to say, any monies that are unused in the training fund will be surrendered and will be made available again. In terms of placements, the issue which you've raised, we're very cognisant of it. We're all hearing of it every single day of the week within our own, within the department and within our own constituency offices. But that's a challenge which is COVID related. Actually, there was a backlog before COVID was there, Minister, but it's a very, very serious backlog now. And I'd ask you to do everything you possibly can are using the access that's there in the National Training Fund to make sure that those over 6,000 apprentices don't have to extend on beyond the four years to six years or whatever, because you will be acutely aware of the knock-on implications of that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.