Debate contribution: Cross-border Education

Debate contribution by Mr Matthew O'Toole on 2 March 2026.

MLA

Mr Matthew O'Toole

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

2 March 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Cross-border Education

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5433390

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I am pleased to speak to the motion. I am really glad that it was tabled and am pleased that there is a degree of consensus. I am, however, slightly confused by the Ulster Unionist position, to be honest. I hope that we can arrive at consensus and that we hear from the Minister about where she is with the policy and about the latest that she has heard from the Irish Government. Third-level education is a huge privilege, a treasure and something that is economically critical, notwithstanding all the doom-laden warnings about automation; in fact, lots of the things that people study in third-level education, including the humanities and the arts, will be extraordinarily important. I hope that we can reassert the primacy of human knowledge and human ability over the idea that we will all be automated out of employment. There are a few themes on which I want to pick up. As David Honeyford has just said, it is really sad and regrettable that, over the past decade or two, as we have moved through the post-Good Friday Agreement age, when we were supposed to be interacting and engaging much more on the island, the number of Northern students going South has fallen. Something really important that was preserved through the worst of the conflict was the fact that pupils from all traditions up here regularly went down South, especially to Trinity and UCD. Numbers have since fallen, but, in the past year or two, there has been a significant increase in the number of students from the South coming North, and that is welcome. I know that because Queen's University is in the heart of my constituency; indeed, it is next to my constituency office. There is, however, clearly a huge barrier in the way of Northern students applying to universities in the South. It is an artificial barrier that does not need to be in place. It is structurally harder to apply. As people have said, the UCAS process is timed differently, and how it is aligned means that people will often simply take, as it were, the bird in the hand rather than wait for confirmation of a place on a course that they might like to have done in Dublin, Cork or Galway or wherever. That is not right, because sometimes going to that city and doing that course would have been the best thing for them. That artificial barrier exists, but it really does not have to. I am someone who started to go through the CAO process but then took the bird in the hand. I went to university in Scotland, which I do not regret at all; I had a great time. Lots of people from Northern Ireland travel across the water, as they say, to university; in my case, it was 25 years ago. The sad thing is that the opportunity to move to a different part of this island to study has become harder, not easier. I want to know from the Minister whether she can give us an update today. That involves asking her what the Irish Government are doing. A year or two ago, we had a big report from universities. It was funded through the Shared Island initiative by Universities Ireland. I am not clear what progress has been made since then. The report was publicised with bells and whistles, but I want to know what is happening in universities south of the border, not just Trinity and UCD. Other universities south of the border are available, as you, Mr Deputy Speaker, are well able to tell us. There is DCU, the University of Galway and the University of Limerick. Atlantic Technological University has been mentioned, and Dundalk Institute of Technology is now connected to Queen's, I am proud to say. There are terrific institutions across the island. I do not think that it is better that a student go to one university over another, be it one on this island or one on the island next door, but I want us to remove barriers to opportunities for young people. I have talked a lot about my experience of leaving here and staying away for 20 years. I did that not because I made a big decision that I was leaving and did not want to come back but because, like a lot of people, I left when I was still young, after which my life then started in a different place. Those are the decisions that one makes.

We want to give people maximum opportunity and incentive to come back and make their life here. If that means studying on this island, that is great, but, ultimately, it is about giving young people maximum opportunity. Since it has come up several times, I will talk about the MaSN cap. I agree that there is a challenge in student numbers in Northern Ireland. I do not disagree with that — it would be mad to disagree with it — but it is glib to simply say, "We'll increase fees". Look at the scandal that is unfolding in Britain around student fees: you have something that was supposed to be designed to look like a graduate tax, but the taxation structure is levied in such a way that it is an extraordinary debt burden that is unfairly placed on people who make that choice. That keeps people out of third-level education rather than incentivising them to go into it, so I am not sure that that is an answer either. I strongly support the motion. I want to see people travel all over this island and, indeed, the island next door to go to university. I am keen to hear from the Minister on whether she has an update. I might not be able to hear it all, because I have to go to a different call, but I will check Hansard afterwards to see what she said. I am pleased to support the motion.

999 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:00 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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