Taoiseach Micheál Martin has reaffirmed the Government’s commitment to reducing student fees over time, but he acknowledged there was no funding earmarked at present for avoiding a €1,000 increase this year.
For the past two years, a cost of living payment has reduced the student contribution of €3,000 by €1,000, but he said there would be no such one-off payment this year.
His comments come amid divisions within the Coalition between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil over an increase in college fees.
Tánaiste and Fine Gael leader Simon Harris told his party’s TDs that the budget would seek to reduce the costs of going to college after Fianna Fáil’s Minister for Higher Education James Lawless suggested that the end of cost-of-living packages would mean that fees payable by students would increase.
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On a visit to Japan, Mr Martin said: “Last year and the year before we got a lot done through the cost-of-living packages, which were once-off packages which were not in the mainstream budget. So therein lies a difficulty.”
He said the Government had commitments on research investment, the Susi grant for third-level education and for third-level students with disabilities “that they would get additional supports”.
“There’s a broad range of priorities there. So it’ll all go forward to negotiations,” Mr Martin said.
The Taoiseach said the issue of student fees would be part of negotiations between individual ministers and the Minister for Public Expenditure.
[ Third-level fees: Divisions emerge between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil over increase ]
The outcome of those negotiations would depend in turn on how much the Government decided to allocate to current expenditure for the coming year.
“It’s early days in the sense that a lot will depend on the envelope that’s agreed – in other words how much are we going to be spending this year on current expenditure,” he said.
“That will be have to be divided up between the ministers, and each minister will have a different set of priorities.”
On Tuesday, Mr Harris said this year’s budget could still be used to help college students, but that there will be no cost-of-living package in advance of Christmas.
The Taoiseach was speaking in Tokyo at the start of a four-day visit to Japan during which he will meet prime minister Shigeru Ishiba.
Speaking on Tuesday afternoon, Mr Harris said parents of college students should pay fees in installments and “see where the budget brings us”.
Mr Harris said the overwhelming majority of student fees are paid in installments and that it was not the case that most families pay a bill of €3,000 per student in September. He argued that the absence of a cost of living package in the budget was “not the same thing” as increasing the cost of going to college.
“The programme for Government is clear. The direction of travel Government wants to go in terms of reducing the costs of college, and we’re also clear in terms of how the actual process of paying fees works.”
Mr Harris argued that it was not contradictory to be speaking about expansionary budgets alongside worsening economic mood music arising from tariff clashes with the Trump White House.
The fees issue dominated in the Dáil on Tuesday as Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers, taking Leaders’ Questions, came under intense opposition pressure over the proposed increase.
Labour leader Ivana Bacik accused the Government of taking an “Alice in Wonderland” approach, because Mr Chambers seemed to saying that “people may think this is an increase, but really it’s a reduction, and that’s not the reality”.
Sinn Féin finance spokesman Pearse Doherty said the plan to “jack up” fees by €1,000 was a “calculated betrayal of students and the public”.
“Sending a kid to college is already costing families an arm and a leg”, he said, and “hitting them with an extra €1,000 will make going to college impossible for many, and no wonder young people are leaving this country in their droves”.
Mr Chambers insisted however the Government had taken measures for permanent and sustained student reductions as one in three students, or more than 44,000, paid no fees.
Acting Social Democrats leader Cian O’Callaghan said the Government “promised to reduce student fees, you are now breaking those promises that you have made”.
Mr O’Callaghan hit out at the Government blaming the US tariff threats. “Donald Trump was elected before our election took place, and yet the Government seems to only discover those threats after the election. You’re fooling no one on this.”
[ ‘Punch to the gut’: Students condemn potential €1,000 rise in third-level fees ]
Mr Martin is in Japan to open Ireland House in Tokyo, the biggest single capital project the State has ever undertaken overseas, and visit the Irish pavilion at Expo 2025 in Osaka before meeting survivors of the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
