Madam, - Your editorial of September 9th, "Paying For College", states that, in the debate on the future of third-level education "the key question now is: should those who benefit from third-level education contribute to the cost of it?"
Madam, - Your editorial of September 9th, "Paying For College", states that, in the debate on the future of third-level education "the key question now is: should those who benefit from third-level education contribute to the cost of it?"
Why stop there? Why not apply the principle more widely? Introduce entrance fees to the National Museum, National Library and municipal parks around the country. Toll every road, no matter how small. Abolish the Arts Council.
Charge to borrow books from public libraries (which, of course, we would no longer refer to as "public"). And of course, demand that primary school students pay the full economic cost of their education - though, clearly, five-year-olds would be allowed to sign loan agreements on their first day at school.
Or we could try a different idea. People pay taxes to their Government, which in turn provides a range of public services. Those services are chosen because the benefit to society of those services far exceeds the private benefit to the individuals concerned, because public provision results in a fairer distribution of society's resources, and because far-sighted collective provision produces the investment in a better future that private provision will never provide.
This idea is quite popular in other countries, where they call it "citizenship".
As the ESRI has recently found, there has been a sharp increase in the participation of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds at third level since fees were abolished. As a result, thousands of people have benefited from third-level education and are working, contributing to the economy, and paying taxes to support those who come after them. In fact, the debate should now be focused on how we can do more, not how we can go backwards. - Yours, etc.,
JAN O'SULLIVAN, TD, Leinster House, Dublin 2.