The Opposition’s clarion call was clear.
The Opposition wants clarity.
That’s simple enough. Or maybe it isn’t.
You see, it isn’t that simple. Or maybe it is.
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So what is happening with the third-level fees this year?
Have they gone up by €1,000 with the removal of a substantial Government subsidy? Or are they going down, as was promised in the programme for government?
Can they go up and down and stay the same all at the one time?
Are pronouncements about third-level fees from the Minister for Further and Higher Education and the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste and various TDs from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael confusingly all over the place, or is everyone saying the same thing but in different ways?
A new academic year is barrelling down the tracks and people are carefully budgeting for it. Most had not envisaged a hefty fee increase until the Minister for Further and Higher Education, James Lawless, confirmed at the weekend that a €1,000 reduction introduced three years ago to offset cost-of-living increases is being scrapped.
While the cost of living shows no sign of slowing down.
The ensuing consternation marched in high dudgeon to the Dáil on Tuesday.
But the Taoiseach had fled to Japan.
And the Tánaiste was hiding out at a debutantes ball in Áras an Uachtaráin where new ambassadors were presenting themselves to President Higgins and the Irish diplomatic whirl.
This was no bad thing.
These pressing questions requiring total clarity related to matters of a fiscal nature, so no better man to take Leaders’ Questions in their absence than the Minister for Public Expenditure and former Minister for Finance, Jack Chambers.
Jack had all the answers.
On the back of an envelope, in turgid detail, wrapped up in jargon-laced mandarin-speak.
Where was the clarity?
Haven’t a clue.
Maybe Jack’s envelope had a see-through window on the front of it.
Chambers of Commerce managed to refer to this “envelope” at least half a dozen times while still not saying definitively if the student fee for this year will be €2,000 or €3,000.
All that Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty and Labour’s Ivana Bacik and Cian O’Callaghan of the Social Democrats wanted from him was clarity on the fee situation.
Instead, Jack droned on about fiscal stationery.
Clarity. “Just to put this issue to bed,” said Pearse.
Not much hope of that, with the Government’s Humpty Dumpty approach to explaining things.
As Mr Dumpty once famously said: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
Suddenly, it all made sense to Ivana Bacik.
When she listened to Chambers of Commerce talking about envelopes and parameters and medium term expenditure strategies, she realised he was taking an “Alice in Wonderland approach” to providing clarity to students, parents and Opposition TDs on the fees question.
“Because what I think you said is that people may think this is an increase, but really it’s a reduction.”
Which he may well have been saying.
Naturally, parents and students are worried about having to find an extra €1,000 this year for fees, but honestly, there is nothing to worry about because once everyone has “engaged around the envelope” ahead of Budget 2026, this may not turn out to be the case.
Meanwhile, far away on the other side of the world, Jack’s leader and mentor, Taoiseach Micheál Martin, was also explaining what may happen with third-level fees which will be due in September.
“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 in Tokyo.
Why are you blaming Donald Trump and attacking students?
— Pearse Doherty
Back home, Chambers of Commerce was throwing further light on the fees confusion by introducing Trumpty Dumpty, who is also very good at moulding words to mean whatever fibs he chooses them to mean.
Jack didn’t mention Donald Trump by name but Pearse Doherty and Cian O’Callaghan knew who he was talking about.
So how much will be the fee be this year?
The Minister was on firm ground here, albeit standing “against a backdrop of a huge level of economic uncertainty”. He said ominously: “We are one week away from the July 9th tariff deadline and the Exchequer returns due to be published next week will give a point-in-time indication of the broader economic position our country is in.”
Why drag Donald Trump’s tariffs into this discussion about sticking an extra €1,000 on the student fee at the last minute, they asked?
“Why are you blaming Donald Trump and attacking students? This is a double whammy,” fulminated Pearse.
Cian wasn’t buying that line either. “Did you only discover the economic risks and threats posed by the Trump Administration after the election?” he wondered, pointing out that Trump was already in power amid growing fears of a threat to our economy when election promises were made about third-level fees.
Now that the election is over, trying to use those fears “as an excuse for breaking promises doesn’t cut it with people”, he said.
Jack tried to reassure parents and students by giving a lot of examples of measures already introduced to help the latter financially as Opposition leaders kept trying to find out if a €1,000 fee increase is imminent.
What he could say is that the Minister for Further and Higher Education is going to “engage with everyone across the Government around what is possible within the overall envelope”.
We will set out an envelope in the coming weeks
— Jack Chambers
But there will not be a one-off cost-of-living measure in the next budget.
On the bright side, the Coalition is “working on the medium-term expenditure strategy and also working on what targeted, sustained supports we can bring and give to families to make public services more affordable, to support families when it comes to higher education and the cost of education more generally.”
This is all part of a broader discussion. “That’s how annualised budgeting works in this economy.”
Things are moving fast.
“We will set out an envelope in the coming weeks,” said Chambers of Commerce. Apparently it might be here by the end of July and then all the Ministers will starting engaging around it.
But will there be a €1,000 increase come September? That’s what the Opposition wanted to know. Any chance of a bit of clarity?
Obviously, caution is required.
“And it is within that context that we are negotiating Budget 2026 and what I would say to families is that we’ll agree an envelope that will be available for changes around taxation and current expenditure and, indeed, the uplift we want to give to capital in the economy. That will form the basis of our discussion with all ministers as to what changes we can make for Budget 2026 …”
Pearse was defeated.
“I just asked about fees,” he said forlornly.
