Reintroducing fees will not benefit the less well off. This will just be a revenue adjustment for the Government. All that they keep talking about is how much this will save – cf the front of the Irish Times last

I could agree to some form of student loans for those who don’t fall into the free fees income bracket. It’s the tying 18 year olds to their parents that I have a problem with – this works when giving them money but is totally unfair on the 18 year old when taking money off them.

BTW – I completely agree that our universities are not adequately funded.

The logis is not just that your family is poor – we have been talking about cut-off salaries of greater than 100,000 Euro. Some others are talking about cut-offs of 140,000-160,000.

As for the suggestion that this is a way of saving money for the government – if this became the situation, then i would be completely, totally against it. This is not what it is about.

What it is about is :

1. Access to university
2. Adequate funding for education in Ireland with some contribution from the users.

We should not be limiting the choices of young people because of their parents income. One can easily imagine scenarios where daddy says ‘I’m not paying for you to do archeology’ (or whatever).

The logic that your family is poor; therefore you get a grant does not work in reverse. Why should one 18 year old (ADULT)have to ask mummy and daddy for money to go to college and another get in for free?

The fact that the Government has underfunded universities is not the fault of the middle classes – do you really think that any monies raised under the return of fees will be ‘extra’ income? Bat O’Keefe has been talking about how much this will save the Government – work it out for yourself.

That is a shame, we were lucky in that everyone in the class got jobs, albeit in a different section of software from our training, but that is another rant for another time. That being said there was only 5 of us left.

As for where the recession is? I have lots of recent graduates telling me that jobs are thin on the ground. You have a 1st class honour – generally a cohort of people that won’t have much trouble getting a job. Well done you!

I was happy for this and not having to pay fees, as my maintenance grant, the full one no less, did not even cover my rent and bills. Then I had to get books (yes, we still buy those) and hardware, and have my own transport as there was no easy way to get anywhere I needed to go.

I graduated after 4 years of college with 1st class honors, with none of my saving left, and I thank the education system for not making me pay fees to the college and at least letting me cover some of my expenses. Thank you “free education”. And I have a job, we all do from the class, wheres this recession then

You are obviously slightly incorrect when you say you never got anything for free – your child went to college for free.

In none of the schemes outlined above would you end up paying fees and nobody is suggesting that you would. In the scheme proposed by Dan Sullivan, you might even benefit financially from having a child in uni.

I would think that your neightbor who is getting an allowance to go back to college, rather than getting the dole has a much higher likelihood afterwards of getting a well-paid job, contributing more to the country and paying more tax, which is better for everybody. You obviously would prefer if they stayed at home on the dole for the rest of their lives.

Its very easy to sit around and say everything is crap and nobody should get anything, but personally, I would prefer to be a little more progressive.