Third Level Admissions
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-12
============================================================

Matt Carthy (SF), Cavan-Monaghan

The Minister cannot finish an answer by claiming credit for providing extra places in courses when he started his reply by saying this has to be an autonomous-based system where there is no political interference because political decisions affect the number of places available on courses. I am sure the Minister will accept that.
Last year, we are told that entry to 25 undergraduate courses with high level points were determined by random selection. That means people secured very high points in their leaving certificate but were not able to secure their preferred choice because of random selection. Essentially, it was a lottery.
The Minister did not answer the question in respect of the number of international students. It is important that we get those answers because the Minister has been quoted as suggesting that some universities are gaming the system. If people are being denied places to courses in areas for which we have shortages in the State and universities are selling places in those courses to international students, that is a problem this House needs to be aware of and informed of.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-12/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-12