 Felly wrth gwrs, mae'n fawr i'r hyn yn gweithio'r gweithio o'ch cyfrifesio'r cyfrifesio. Mae'n cael ei ffordd i'r cyfrifesio'r cyfrifesio yng nghyrchu, ac mae'n ddau'r gwahanol o'r sylfyddiadau deichel, mewn gwneud o'r ysgol a'r ysgol. Felly, y lle'n gweithio, mae'n cael ei wneud o'r holl. Mae'n gweithio'r llwyth ag yw'r llwyth, in the event of there being a necessity to be forced out of the building hasn't happened in the past, which you shall be aware of it. And secondly, if you wouldn't mind, can you turn these off? not on silent, preferably, unless you have to, but it does affect our recording of the proceedings. The contributions from the speakers are on the record but the discussion afterwards is subject to European House rules or Chatham House rules, which is you can use the information that you receive or hear, but you can't necessarily attribute it to where you heard it or who said it. That provides for a tradition that has worked very, very well in our 30 years in this institution and we've not had an abuse of that particular caveat. Felly, rydyn ni'n oes i'r unrhyw ymddylch o'r ysgrifennu Ymgrifennu Graeme i'r gwaith i'r ffordd ynghyrch a'r gweithio'n gwaith. Ymgyrch i'r ffordd. Ymgyrch, wrth gwrth gweithio. Ymgyrch hefyd ymgyrch gan ymgyrch yn blynyddoedd 5 ffunksion ffynllwyd ar y ffrif y 1971. rydyn y wathgen, yn Cymru o ddweud y Llyfrgell, Ieisrwyddo chi'n castig yn y gwasanaeth gyrdys Clifresol a Llyfrgell andeithasio'r SNF i'w prifwein am ddwyllt. Ieisrwyddo chi'n gyflieswyr o ran unrhyw y ddweud o amrygiadau a'r ddwylo cael newyd. Prwyfodio'r lleolau a'r ddweud o'r bobl yn ei wneud o'r unrhyw ysgrifennu i Llyfrgell ac yn y ddweud o'r democratisio fod y ddweud o'r Llyfrgell yn allan, o'r cymdeithio. supporters of a public debate on an issue as key as the future of funding meets all five of these functions and indeed, they should be seen as complimentary to each other and not simply as individual functions of the authority. We're delighted to therefore to sponsor today's discussions here at the Institute for International European Affairs and we hope that the deliberations will assist us in our policy work and advocacy for the higher education and research system. The scale of the funding challenge for Irish higher education is enormous. We should learn from other countries, both from positive experiences and from mistakes. We must also remember that unique circumstances also pertain here in Ireland. Key among them is that our participation rate in higher education is one of the highest in the world, and that because of the demographic bulge working its way through our system, we have very high levels of demand now and into the medium term. There is always a danger in these discussions of bamboozling with figures, so I'll try to keep them at a high level, but I think it's important that the discussion today is set in context. Last year we had about 44,000 new full-time undergraduate entrance to the system that is up to 7% in five years. We have 70,000 graduates now annually, about 49,000 of these from undergraduate courses, both full-time and part-time, that is up 16% in five years. In total we now have over 180,000 full-time and about 38,000 part-time students in the system. Against that background of significant growth in student numbers, rate investment in higher education declined 38% from about $2 billion in 2009 to $1.3 billion in 2016. The decrease in state funding was compensated somewhat by an increase in student contribution, which currently stands at 3,000 per annum. The latest international comparator figures indicate that expenditure on tertiary education in Ireland, including both public and private spending, was about 1.2% of GDP in 2013, below the OECD average of 1.6%. The recurrent cost of an average undergraduate student, all things included, is estimated at about 9,000 euro annually. So even where the student pays 3,000, that means another 6,000 must be found from somewhere to meet the cost of that investment. For every new place that we wish to create in our system, we need to ensure that money is also provided if we do not wish quality to be threatened. We should also remember that over 40% of full-time undergrads are in receipt of grants, which means that the state also pays the 3,000 contribution in those cases. As you know, part-time students do not qualify for the free fees initiative. I think regard should also be had to the other costs faced by students on the rising cost of student accommodation in particular. We are part of an active cross-departmental working group to address the student housing issue, but these costs also present a major challenge for students and their families. The IIEA has brought together an excellent series of speakers today who will guide us through these challenges and outline, in their view, why particular approaches will or will not work. The IIEA would like to see more debates like this, which will help to encourage a greater awareness of the value of higher education and research, the value of higher education and research to stress that. These discussions should not be confined to those of us directly engaged inside the system. Higher education and research will continue to underpin Ireland's economic and social development, but only where we have a sustainable funding model, and we do not have one at present. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Graeme. Our next speaker is Peter Castells. Very welcome, and the author of the report that carries his name. Thank you very much, Rory. I talked for a moment there, the chair was going to have a difficulty with my name, is it Castells or is it Castells? I feel the same about the report, because listening through many of the debates and discussions, both inside and outside of Parliament on the report, I'm convinced there are two reports. There's the Castells report, and this is the Castells report. Because some things I've heard, I'm still not sure which reports are in, whether we ever actually said those things. So I'm going to try and, as a word, demystify some of the things here today. I want to thank the Institute and the HAA for organising this particular discussion and for the opportunity to talk with us. I know most of you are thinking, well, the report is over two years old, so what's happening and why are we still debating and discussing it? However, on the other hand, we could say there has been some small momentum in the sense that some funding has begun again into the sector that wasn't there before. Also, I think there's a general sense that the issues do need to be addressed and to be resolved, and therefore I suppose part of the strategy at the moment is keeping the debate alive and keeping the strong focus on the particular issues. But we do, at some stage and some stage soon, need to get to the two decisions. Now, I don't intend to go through the report. I'm going to make the assumption that all of you have read it, but I'm not going to go through it because it's not a technical report. And I want to stress that it's a report that deals with a major societal challenge that is a fundamental public policy, area and public policy choices that need to be made, and they are difficult choices. And they are choices, obviously, that at the end of the day have to be made for politicians, but it's not just for politicians, it's for all of us in terms of how this choice is going to be addressed. So instead of going into the technical details of the report, I'm going to concentrate on the context and on the thinking behind the various conclusions and recommendations and why did we come to those particular conclusions and recommendations. Now, you know and will be aware that the overall conclusion of the report is that higher education has been at the heart of this country's transformation and that we need to restore it to being a key enabler of our future development. The country has been a number of times at a turning point, or is at a turning point at the moment. We know that we're transitioning out of a very deep crisis, not just a deep economic crisis, but also a deep social crisis arising from the consequences of the economic crisis. We are striving to restore development and revive development and to lay out the foundations for future prosperity, while at the same time addressing many societal challenges. It's obviously the challenge of the health services that we know about, the challenges of housing that emerge, there's Brexit, there's what's happening generally in the world around trade and development, there's climate change, there's the conflicts that emerge worldwide out of all of these sorts of developments, there's technology, there's the digitisation across multiple platforms of the way in which we're going to work and live, and that in itself is changing the world for us. That gives us huge uncertainty, and there are no obvious immediate answers you can take down from the shelf. So people do ask, and the question has been asked, what's our strategy for dealing with all of this? At the end of the day, the report concludes that the main strategy we have is our capabilities and our people. And that day for us, as a people, we need to rebuild and enhance our capabilities, both at the individual or personal level, at the interpersonal level, in terms of how we address the challenges and opportunities we face and at an institutional level. And that the big requirement in that context as to how you rebuild and enhance those capabilities, as I said at a personal, interpersonal and institutional level, is significant investment in higher education, further education, apprenticeships, and post-second level opportunities. So that is the sort of platform that we are working off. And the title of the report is quite deliberate. It said, investing in national ambition. Talk a lot of discussion with various government departments to get them to agree to that particular phrase, as a word, but that is what we were determined to try and convey as to how you would look at this particular issue. Now, the other issue of context, and I started to talk about context and thinking, is that this requirement for significant investment in higher education and further education, apprenticeships, is coming at a time, of course, when even though our national finances have stabilized, there is still a stretch in terms of what resources are available for public expenditure, and also how some incomes themselves as well remain stretched and limited. And at the same time, we are facing multiple competing choices with understandable demands for increase in resources, particularly in health services, housing, and the other challenges I mentioned earlier. Now, I deliberately called them competing choices and not conflicting choices, which brings us back to the question as to why this isn't a technical issue. It is about the public policy, political and societal choices that we have to make. And all of this is also coming at a time when you would say, well, surely we can just, you know, take the current system and tweak it a bit, and tweak it and shape it and reshape it slightly. Well, in fact, the report concludes that the current system of funding higher education is no longer sustainable. So that's the other important context that we had to look at and deal with. It points out that the current system, first of all, fails to recognise the pressures that are facing the higher education institutions and I'll come back to that in terms of the staffing and student ratios and that, but also the scale of the demographic changes that we're facing and already Graham has mentioned those. And it also fails to recognise the pressures that families and students are under, not just because of the 3,000 feed that is paid, even though, as we know, over half of them get some level of support for that, but also the high living and maintenance costs associated with studying and with successfully progression through college because it's not just a question of entry, it's a question of progressing through the whole system. So to deal with those contexts, the group recommended, first of all, that there should be an immediate increase in resources to deal with current problems. People seem to believe that, in fact, what we did was recommended a reform system and that also what the discussion was. We did say there were two phases to this, the first one being an immediate increase in resources to deal with current pressures, but also then early agreement on a reformed, integrating funding system for higher education. And I'll come back to that emphasis on reformed integrated system because that is what it needs to be. And within that then you would significantly increase investment for higher education taking account, as I mentioned earlier, of the increased demographics, the capital needs and restoring the staff-student ratio. And also enhancing the financial supports for students including an increase in the value of the payments and an extension of those supports to part-time and postgraduate students. And that this increase in investment must be underpinned by complementary reforms within the higher education system. In other words, that's more flexibility, much more effective and much more responsive. So again, I just want to emphasize the point that today's discussion is about funding where we saw this as an integrated approach where the funding would be integrated with again significant reform in the way in which the system will become more flexible and will become more effective and responsive. And we did realize, of course, that part two, as I mentioned, would require fairly constructive and realistic discussion. Now I want to come down to what was the thinking behind the, if that was the context, what was the thinking behind the specific recommendations and conclusions that we came. And it's interesting that the debate so far on the report, there appears to be general agreement on the funding requirements. In other words, a scale of investment is needed. It doesn't matter what the figures are. However, when it comes to then, how would you fund that investment? Different people, different stakeholders and different approaches continue to have a particular model of funding as their first preference. Now, the important thing, and the report emphasizes this, is that it's not wrong with all of us having a first preference, but we have to move and get beyond that stage. Because if the discussion doesn't converge and just restates preferences leading to stalemate, we're simply going to be back to consolidating the status quo, which, as I mentioned earlier, is unsustainable. And the reason it's important to emphasize that is the status quo is not a cost-free option. The existing funding system is imposing costs in terms of the quality of the student experience and the learning outcomes. Even though, understandably, the institutions can't short that from the rooftops for all obvious reasons. It also means there's the exclusion of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. The career opportunities of our graduates in what, as I mentioned earlier, is a very changing labour market is under pressure. And ultimately, the contribution that I mentioned earlier that higher education needs to make to our future economic and social development, it is also threatened. So I think there has to be some level of agreement that the status quo is not an option and, therefore, we need to get into constructive and realistic debate about the options which, in turn, obviously means often moving away from our own first preferences. Sometimes people are seeking refuge in funding models from abroad and that we might copy them. Now, there are available international examples and approaches that have attractive features. But the key thing about them is again going back to the context. In many areas, the context is totally different. We have a growing young dynamic population which is going to be of huge benefits to us that other countries don't have. Or they have a particular approach, societal approach to how public services or other services are funded that's different. The challenge for us is to identify a model of funding or a formed model that suits the Irish context while drawn, of course, on some of the best features of what others have developed and has worked elsewhere. But not believing that you can suddenly copy and transfer something from somewhere else. Now, I just want to say a few brief words saying about the thinking behind the level of funding that we said was required. Because William will note that the Department of Finance and the Department of Public Expenditure probably had multiple heart attacks from the solid scale of the figures. The figures actually had a particular thinking behind them. And they do help to frame and reframe the reform package. And that enables you to go beyond just trying to compare what the reform package would be to the existing system. So we have to get beyond just looking at the existing arrangements and just comparing them to what the recommendations are to moving to see this is a reformed model that will take you into the future. And the first one was that we need an ambitious increase in investment. So tinkering with the current system and just adding bits here and there wasn't what we recommended. We said for all the reasons I mentioned earlier in the context that we needed an ambitious increase in investment. And that would take account of the projected increases in rolements that were mentioned. But all so creates an engaged small group, high trust, high expectation, teaching and learning. Because that's what's necessary if we're going to build people's capabilities to deal with economic, social and cultural challenges that I mentioned earlier. And you can see it in other countries who are at the same level of development of ourselves. Because they are devoting more attention and resources to high quality education. There is free at the point of access for students and students from a range of social backgrounds. So I'm not going to go into the figures. You know what we recommended by way of an increase in the recurrent funding. But what we did say was that that increased funding was to provide for the increased demographics but also to improve the quality of the student experience and the learning outcomes. And secondly then we talked about an increased investment in quality. In other words, that the funding that we were talking about would lead to excellent teaching, research and scholarship across a spectrum which would be the humanity, social sciences and STEM disciplines. And we did say and I'm just going to throw in this for mischief is the fact that the debate and the arguments that still seem to go on and differentiation as between the humanities and STEM subjects. We do really need to bring that to an end. It's getting tired and boring in terms of the impact that all of this are interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary and we can have on our challenges that I mentioned earlier. So we did recommend a significant improvement in the student staffing ratio which used to be 16 to 1. It's gone now to over 20 to 1. And we recommended over time bringing it back to 16 to 1 and then bringing it to 14 to 1 in the context of the challenges I mentioned earlier. And just to say that there are countries, other countries are 10 to 1 which we are aspiring to be looking at and linked with. And then the third area and I think it is very important because if we go back to this issue as being a major issue of public policy and choices in public policy then you're really talking about that it's part of the social contract in our society. And every key part of the social contract will have to be a major increase in access, participation and progression for all economic and social groups. So it's crucially important again in terms of trying to explain why you need this ambitious level of investment that this is one of the social contracts underpinning it. And that will require an increase in the value of student supports and extension of those supports to part-time and postgraduate students and also a more effective way of delivering that student financial aid. Now the last issue we want to deal with if that's the scale of what you're saying that it's ambitious investment don't mind the figures we can argue them up or down. The next question is what are the actual options for funding that investment? And again our thinking is centred on a number of areas. It's centred on three broad strategies and how would you balance the cost of what you're talking about as between society or the state or all of us wanting a higher education system and how it contributes to that. The student who's a beneficiary and employers who are in Ireland are a significant beneficiary. And so we recommend it as a guiding principle that you have to look at the questions of fairness and balance and that they have to be taken into account in developing a new funding system. That's fairness and balance as a where the public benefits of higher education and the private benefits between investment and cost containment and between those with different levels of family income or access to resources to enable and help them those way. And that's what brings into focus the key issue of how we view the individual and collective benefits of higher education because when you look at what are collective and individual benefits that's obviously going to have an influence on how you decide it should be funded or resourced. And the question that we were talking about was how to share that. Now I'm not going to go into a lot of the detail here either except to say that we know in the decades since the 1950s our higher education system has been at the heart of that public benefit in terms of our economic and social transformation. As we know as sword and well over half of our workforce now have a third level qualification. I mean I remember there was nobody in my class went to higher education when I left school so you can have a guess at that now in terms of my age but nobody did. Most of them afterwards obviously did what was known as the night courses and night degrees and all of that. And yet all of my family and all of my nieces and nephews are all in some way or other involved in third level education at different levels within it. So it has been a huge transformation. As part of the review of the further review itself we did engage in those terrible things called focus groups. But within the focus groups it was very clear in all parts of the country that people did recognise the contribution of higher education to our society, to our economy our culture our public life including the formation of citizens and that was widely understood and valued. So we should recognise that and see how we build on that. There was also a recognition around how it contributed both to individual fulfilment and collective good and also that it's an end in itself which is crucially important as well in terms of the pursuit of knowledge and understanding meaning across, as I mentioned earlier all disciplines. There was also an understanding particularly outside of Dublin of the important and key role that universities and institutes of technology play as centres of research and knowledge generation and engines of regional and local development and that came forward as a very strong issue as I say certainly outside of the city. We also know that in overall terms the states through higher taxation and lower calls on welfare benefits significantly from the investment that will have been made in higher education and then the individual benefits because graduates earn more the calculations that we did showed that an honours degree or higher is linked to earning 100% more than adults whose highest education attainment is a leave and start or more so that's there, it's a fact it's through so we need to factor that in when we're looking at how we deal with it. So as I said higher education contributes both to the individual success and to the collective good and that's the sort of core idea that underpins the drive that has been in this country a long standing drive to widen access to higher education further education apprenticeships and other ways and it's also an important consideration in determining how higher education should be funded and it was one of the reasons that veered us away from recommending capping numbers because the whole argument we are making is around as I said, that's role of widening access being the key part of our long standing goal for where we take society now. So as I indicated earlier the three funding options that you're considering over there were seeking to balance the cost between the state, the individual and employers. So the first one was a predominantly state funded system and I'm not going to go into the detail except to say that that wouldn't mean that the state's contribution at the moment is about 64% to the funding of higher education would go up to 80% or the 20% coming from the various other groupings. So you could say okay the group advice okay that would deliver you free access at the point of entry so it covers up and all and it would be administratively simple. However and remember all the options have both strong and negatives to them and you have to consider them in that way the question then is about the availability of sufficient state resources to implement that option particularly going back to what I said earlier about the priorities around health services, housing other areas of education so where do you come in that demand. And also you have to ask the question of whether higher education given the high individual benefits I mentioned is actually or could be fully considered a pure public good so that raises that particular question as to whether you can look at that on its own given the benefits to the individual within society. The second one then was essentially the status quo which was the continuation of the current system and within that we looked at providing a significant increase in investment by the states and the continuation of the 3,000 student contribution with the fee wavers I mentioned which about 50% get at the moment. So that model would increase the state share of investment to 72% from the 64. Now again you could acknowledge that that balance between the student and the individual and the state it's already established however it doesn't deal with the impact of the 3,000 on families or some families it doesn't deal with the fairness of the grant system and also the lack of support for postgraduate and part-time students and it doesn't deliver free at the point of access obviously and the interesting thing is that when you look at other countries there are no other countries with an actual fee in the system that don't have some arrangement for how you would actually pay that fee through a loan system or wherever. So the third area we looked at was a new system of deferred fees supported by income contingent loans and within that you would have a moderate increase both in state funding and in the student's contribution but the state's shares of where would continue at 60% and the fees that we know would be charged to all students what they would be deferred supported by income contingent loans and repayments would be linked to future salary levels and ability to pay that. So that scenario we mentioned is a possibility and we put down two or three different options that we scaled out and we did indicate that the fee should be regulated and should remain moderate and affordable. Now since then somebody has said to me that recommendation was blown out of the water by Jeremy Corbyn in Britain and I just want to say two things about that again the context on what you're trying to achieve is important. In Britain student loans were introduced not as part of the funding of higher education they were introduced to withdraw the state's contribution to the funding of higher education in the models that we talked all three in one of them the states are you as a taxpayer still in there for 80% in the second one you're still in there for over 70% and in the system of income contingent loans you're still in there as a state or as a taxpayer for over 60% so I just want to emphasise that and then the other pointer has been made of people saying well what about the United States and Barack Obama and Michelle Obama have only been playing off their student loans even when they're going into the presidency. But again it's the difference between income contingent loans and mortgage loans which again the state's been a totally different system than what we're talking about. Now that's not to argue because we did say all three options have merits to them and negative elements to them and are viable so that's what is being discussed at the moment. Obviously that approach would deliver higher education free at the point of access for all students. It would also enable resources to be diverters into maintenance support so a broader base of students and higher levels of payments could be brought about. We also dealt with within that of the whole question of acknowledging however that the ease risk aversion as a word to our debt aversion in terms of how people would see such a system operating. The level of default was something obviously that was raised by a number of groupings and people, the impact of immigration and future graduate debt burden. So these are factors that come into the discussion as well. And then the fourth area we mentioned was a new employer contribution to higher education. And that was in keeping again with the guiding principle of balance and fairness in the case of a better sharing of the cost involved in higher education among the main beneficiaries of higher education. So we did propose an increase in the national training levy and an expansion of that fund to provide greater support for programs in higher education. And specific funding are numbers are mentioned in that and as you know legislation or changes have been brought about to start that. So the very last point I'll make then is in deliberating about those options each of them as I said has strengths and weaknesses and you have to take those into account. It's important that each option is considered together because it's the relative advantages and disadvantages that are relevant. I mean every funding instrument I mentioned there has a tangible negative whether it's taxes, fees student debt repayments or a combination of all of these. If we were to get out of the stalemate and start this call to a new reform system then you have to look at all of the possibilities and options together. It's not realistic to cite the negative characteristic of any one of the instruments in isolation because that will lead you to a situation where you're trying to find a way of funding higher education that doesn't draw resources from some source. And that's where you'll end up back into a sort of negative as aware in your own thinking. So the last point that I just want to make is around the overall conclusion. As I said, we believe and I personally believe and the report concludes that we now have an opportunity to recommit and to reinvest in higher education. We have an opportunity to set a level of ambition for ourselves and to restore higher education and apprenticeships as a key enabler of our future development around all of the challenges both societal and economic and international that I mentioned earlier. However, in return we also need to have a real debate with the sector as to what we require from the sector. Now, I say sector is sort of wondering is it a sector because even in our deliberations with the universities and the institutes and technology and other areas and that it would be safer to say it's a collection of universities and IOTs or indeed a collection of presidents might be a sort of easier way to put it. Now, I accept totally and you would not want to remove this that there's a level of competition both for the provision of programs the number of students the areas we're talking about. But the scale of ambition we're talking about here and where our country needs to go we do need some level of cooperation and collaboration and accountable autonomy around this. And part of the difficulty is in fact that the relationship between I'll still call it the sector and the stage whether that's the department or the Iraq just generally has not been sorted out. Obviously most places with the crash everything is pulled in trains are put in everybody so we don't want the country to go down the tubes now we need to let that back out and it needs to be let back out in a way that recognizes that the sector is going to have to play a dynamic role in all of this. But the key part of that is that it must become a sector not in the negative way of where everybody does the same thing but that enables it to engage with our society around the sort of benefits that I have mentioned and the enhanced role it could play. So we do need universities and institutes of technology that are more responsive to the changing needs I mentioned earlier both of the economy of society and of our public system both in the medium and long term and which gives more attention to the overall employability of graduates and how that can be improved and also the role of higher education in terms of promoting access and ensuring that people from disadvantaged backgrounds that that can be improved dramatically. All of this and to achieve those challenges the group concluded would require a comprehensive and fundamental reformed funding model. And I believe that we should continue to have an open and consider discussion on this challenge but ultimately I think we are probably coming to the stage where decisions need to be made. So thank you very much Helen.