The head of the representative body for Ireland’s seven universities has said that funding issues facing third-level institutions will get “considerably worse” unless there is a significant step-up in investment.
Jim Miley, director-general of the Irish Universities Association (IUA), said that despite modest funding increases in the past two budgets, the state funding per student remained 43 per cent below where it was ten years ago.
Mr Miley told the Oireachtas committee for budgetary oversight that the recent increases had been largely “mopped up” by rising student numbers.
“Given demographics, numbers attending third level will continue to increase over the next decade with 40,000 extra students to be catered for by 2030 as compared with 2015,” he said.
He added: “There is now unanimous support