No decision on level of college fees yet, Paschal Donohoe says

Vivienne Clarke

The Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe has said the government has not yet decided what the level of college fees will be.

It was a standard decision that was made in the Budget every year and it remained unclear what was going to happen.

“We'll be deciding if it goes back from €2,000, it is currently €2,000. Before it's a temporary deduction in place, that would make it €3,000, but the government has to decide what that level of fees will be and haven't done it because we haven't done the budgets,” he told Newstalk’s Pat Kenny show.

“This is a standard budget decision that we make every year and you could ask me what the decision would be in relation to social welfare, in relation taxation and the answer would be the same that we decide all these things on Budget Day.”

“The programme for government makes clear that budget by budget we want to make student life more affordable for students and for parents.

"So that budget, each budget will contain measures to help that but what we can't do and won't be doing is having an additional budget on top of that with one-off measures.

"We have to move to a more normal budgetary cycle that we've been in every other year except for the last few years where we make decisions on budget day about measures that are going to be permanent, that we're confident that we can afford. And we will engage in that process now.”