In a significant move, Trinity College Dublin provost Dr John Hegarty has called for the return of third-level tuition fees in order to allow Irish universities to compete on equal terms internationally.
Dr Hegarty said it "makes no sense" that many students from a wealthy background were not paying fees at third level, even though their parents had spent €5,000 a year for fee-paying secondary schools and grind schools.
Trinity is the only Irish university in the league table of the top 200 published by the The Times Higher Educational Supplement, where it is ranked 78th in the world.
In an Irish Timesinterview, Dr Hegarty said: "Look at the universities who are grouped around us. They have a staff-student ratio which is vastly better than ours. On average they receive twice or three times the level of funding from national government."
He also criticised what he termed the "disconnect" between Government rhetoric about a "world-class" university system and the harsh financial reality facing colleges.
While Trinity was managing its finances well, the financial situation was "very tight" and required constant attention.
While acknowledging the huge increase in research funding for the universities, he said this was creating new problems. "The research funding is increasing but the core grant from Government which must put the supports in place, as well as funding undergraduate programmes, is continuing to shrink," he added.
While all the political parties ruled out the return of fees during the election campaign, senior figures in the education sector say the issue is already back on the agenda because of the financial pressures facing the third-level sector.
The funding problems facing Irish colleges is set to dominate a key meeting later this month of the seven university heads, chaired by Dr Hegarty.
In recent months, UCC president Dr Michael Murphy has also publicly backed the return of fees. Universities, he said, were not going to be able to meet the Government objective of building a world-class third-level system without fees and other new resources. "It will prove very difficult for us."
Dr Hegarty stressed that any new fees regime must also make provision for disadvantaged students.
In the run-up to the election, Minister for Education and Science Mary Hanafin said the issue of fees was off the political agenda "for the foreseeable future". Four years ago former minister for education Noel Dempsey pressed for their return but he failed to muster support from the PDs and some other Cabinet members.
The Dempsey plan would have seen fees of some €5,000 a year for most general arts and business courses, with higher fees for prestige courses like law and medicine.
In 2004, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report on higher education in Ireland backed the return of fees, abolished by the then Fine Gael/ Labour coalition in the mid-1990s. Critics say the abolition represented a subsidy to the middle-class and helped boost private fee-paying education at second level, but supporters of free fees say it has helped to widen access to third-level.
Dr Hegarty also expressed concern about the lack of overall planning for the third-level sector. The third-level system, he said, often found itself operating in something of a policy vacuum, without long-term planning and objectives.
Last week, DCU resident Prof Ferdinand von Prondzynski said a cabinet minister should take responsibility for third-level as the Department of Education and Science was preoccupied with primary and second-level schools.
