It is our privilege to chair governing bodies of Ireland’s research-intensive universities. We come from different backgrounds – business and government, as well as academia – and we write here in a personal capacity.
But we share one conviction: that our universities are central to Ireland’s economic success and its democratic resilience, and that their success depends on adequate funding.
We welcome the progress that has been made. In 2022, Government accepted that the higher education sector was underfunded by €307 million a year. Budget decisions since then have nominally reduced the original gap by more than half.
But the reality is sadly different.
Our costs are increasing all the time, including through unfunded pay awards, wider inflation, and student population growth.
Unlike in primary and secondary education, government doesn’t give universities the funding each year to match the full costs of the pay awards they agree. This exacerbates the funding gap by many tens of millions each year.
On top of that, a growing student population, while hugely welcome, further increases that gap. Between 2022 and 2024, the seven IUA universities took in more than 10,000 additional students – a 7 per cent uplift in just two years.
But funding did not increase to match student numbers. There are now about 9,000 unfunded additional students in the system. And State funding per student, at around 8,000 euros a year, is 30 per cent less in real terms than it was in 2008, since when the student population has gone up by half, and is projected to increase by almost 20 per cent more over the next few years.
Thus, the actual funding deficit we face is still over €250m a year.
Faced with this gap, our universities have been creative and entrepreneurial, raising money through loans and from philanthropy. At the same time, we have modernised our offer, reaching out, beyond the “first time, full time” student population, engaging over 20,000 learners, from across the adult population, in more than 600 new courses – upskilling Ireland’s workforce without needing a single new lecture hall.
There has been important extra money to support research, not least last year, when Government accepted that much of our equipment was obsolescent, a lot of it older than the oldest smart phone.
The new investment in new equipment is welcome. It will contribute to the cutting-edge research we do to support Ireland’s social and economic development. 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.
We understand the range of pressures on public finances and the need to save money for rainy days ahead. But a highly skilled workforce is part of the umbrella Ireland needs to be ready for a more uncertain future. An indigenous innovation economy is the best hedge against excess reliance on foreign direct investment and its corporate tax income.
That is why, for Budget 2027, the Irish Universities Association is asking Government to increase annual core funding by €190 million a year over the next two years.
This 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.
We are also joining business leaders in asking 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 Paschal Donohoe promised in Budget 2024.
To some, this may seem a lot to ask. But consider the return. Our universities contribute €10 billion to the economy every year – 3 per cent of national income – while the State spends less than 1 per cent of GDP on tertiary education, ranking Ireland 36th out of 37 OECD countries.
And consider the cost of not investing. Ireland has flourished through competitive tax rates and our incomparable talent. The OECD global tax agreement cut the first advantage; talent is thus ever more the key. If we continue to under-fund, we become less attractive to foreign investment and reduce our ability to create growth from home-grown innovation and discovery.
The sector’s slow puncture will develop, and in ten years’ time, investments that should have come to Ireland will increasingly go elsewhere. You need only look across the Irish Sea to see what chronic underfunding of higher education does to the wider economy.
Nor is the risk only economic. Our democratic resilience will be eroded if the citizens of tomorrow do not have the critical skills, ethical curiosity, analytical thinking, communication, to navigate a world polluted by misinformation, disinformation, populism and polarisation.
Now is the moment to act. Our universities have shown they can grow, innovate and change. Give us the tools, in Budget 27 and beyond, and we will do our job.
This piece was co-written by Mike Beary, Chair of the Governing Authority, University College Dublin; Paul Farrell, Chair of the Board, Trinity College Dublin; Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, Chair of Údarás na hOllscoile, University of Galway; Brigid Laffan, Chancellor and Chair of the Governing Authority, University of Limerick; Cathal Marley, Chancellor and Chair of the Governing Authority, Dublin City University and Seán O’Driscoll, Chair of the Governing Authority, University College Cork
As it appears as an opinion editorial in the Business Post