Provost Linda Doyle called for increased university funding, expressing strong support for an opinion piece in the Business Post, “Opinion: Budget 2027 must tackle Ireland’s universities €250m funding gap”, co-authored by the chairs of university governing authorities, including Trinity board chair, Mr Paul Farrell. The provost stated the article “does a great job of describing the ‘slow puncture’ of Ireland’s higher education sector”.
The challenges, expressed in the article and specifically underlined by Doyle, include:
- 9,000 unfunded additional students in the higher education system
- State funding per student being 30 per cent less in real terms than it was in 2008
- Ireland ranking 36th of 37 OECD countries for State spending on tertiary education
- The funding deficit faced by the sector stands at over €250m a year despite promises from the government’s Funding the Future policy in 2022
- The fact that underfunding not only carries an economic risk for Ireland, but also erodes our democratic resilience, as critical-thinking skills are vital in a world of misinformation, disinformation, populism and polarisation.
The Business Post piece elaborates on the origins of the funding gap, and talks about investments into new equipment, stating: “It’s important that we’re equipped to bid successfully for the new EU research funding that will be available in the next multi-annual budget. But our potential to deliver fully for Ireland will remain constrained while the wider under-funding continues.”
The authors, chairs of the governing bodies of Ireland’s research-intensive universities (including Trinity, UCD, The University of Galway, UL, DCU and UCC) underline that “a highly skilled workforce is part of the umbrella Ireland needs to be ready for a more uncertain future”, appealing to the Irish Government, in the name of the Irish Universities Association (IUA), “to increase annual core funding by €190 million a year over the next two years”. Such an increase would “eliminate the current funding gap, which will continue growing otherwise, given the anticipated further growth in student numbers, unfunded pay awards and wider inflation in the next couple of years”.
The IUA also asks the Government “to unlock some of the near €2 billion surplus in the National Training Fund, for lifelong learning, upskilling and reskilling to future-proof our workforce” (as was promised in Budget 2024 by Paschal Donohoe).
Provost Linda Doyle reiterated these appeals in her statement in support of the Business Post opinion piece. The statement was published on her LinkedIn account on September 20th, a day after the Business Post article.
