The piece by David McWilliams in Saturday’s The Irish Times should give pause for thought to all those whose only priority is to reduce college fees to zero and introduce free university education for all.
State spending on education in the last 10 years has increased by 47% to €13.5bn. Education is a social good, so this is positive, right?
The performance of our school leavers and our college graduates is world class, at least according to OECD – OCDE Pisa scores. This is not an area we want to fall back in.
However, things are not so rosy when we look at OECD figures for Irish adults.
According to the OECD study of adult (16-65) skills in 2023, Irish literacy skills were marginally (1%) above OECD average, while our numeracy skills and adaptive problem-solving skills were BELOW OECD average. This is not where a high-skill, learning society needs to be.
Yet, at the same time as our adult performance is declining, we are spending LESS on skills education and life-long learning for adults. The Irish Universities Association has noted the impact of the discontinuation of the Micro-credentials Learner Fee Subsidy on courses developed through their Microcreds Project.
Within the Skillnet Ireland, budgets have been static for three years at approximately €50m, and are forecast to remain at that level for the next three years, despite a strategy statement that said they would be funded to €100m by 2025. ISME’s own mentorship budget has been reduced by 47% for 2026, despite the scheme showing really positive results for SMEs last year.
It appears the only priority is cheaper college fees for youth tertiary education. On that score, McWilliams notes the fall in Irish graduates working in high-status employment. Adding free fees to this mix will not improve the situation, it will worsen it, with the work-place premium applied to tertiary education already falling. In Norway, which has prioritised the funnelling of oil revenues into social welfare and education, the The Economist noted more than 70% of workers in unskilled service work now have a masters degree. At the same time, workplace productivity has fallen and real wages have started to fall.
The IZA@LISER Network 2017 study of over-education in Europe put Ireland at the top with Cyprus and Spain at a 30% level of over-education. This would be tolerable and sustainable if we were investing as much money in apprenticeships, skills education, micro credentials and life-long learning, but we are not.
The National Training Fund (NTF) generated a €283 million surplus in 2025 out of €1.3bn collected from employers. Of this, only €53m (4%) was returned to employers via skillnet training which is majority funded by employers!
This must be addressed in Budget 2027
Resources:
- Read the original post by ISME CEO Neil McDonnell here
- The original The Irish Times article by David McWilliams is available here
- The IZA@LISER Network paper on over-education in Europe can be accessed here
- The OECD – OCDE study on adult skills in Ireland is available here
- You can check out the growth in education (or any other) spending over the last 11 years here
