What a dog’s dinner. Education Minister, Batt O’Keefe, flew his ‘bring back tuition fees’ kite. It was immediately shot down by the Greens, the PDs and, even, Minister Hanafin. Then the PDs were shot down by Minister Mary Harney who thinks its a good idea to, at least, debate tuition fees. Is anyone in charge? Oh, well, at least IBEC thinks its a good idea. That should assuage all our fears.

The Left’s position had the virtue of clarity. Ruari Quinn got all pugilist, declaring that Labour would fight the reintroduction of tuition fees ‘tooth and nail’. Fair enough; if that’s all there was to it. But when one steps back from all this, there are a number of serious, long-term questions that need be addressed.

The Irish Times suggested it would cost €300 million to bring our third level up to speed. Not much in the grand scheme of things - only a 3.6 percent increase in the 2008 Education budget. But that is only the tip of the iceberg. There’s a raging debate about what the third level is for. Simply put, there is a suspicion that a number of authorities would like to get rid of whole swathes of the undergraduate curriculum, concentrate on fourth level which brings in the cash, and subordinate higher education to the needs of industry and finance.

Peel off that layer and you have the crisis in other education levels: our pre-school sector is still far behind European average, our primary sector is dependent on voluntary fund-raising and prefabs, our secondary level trails badly in the international stakes; when Mary Hanafin was in Marlborough Street she thought it would be ‘nice’ to have a proper IT programme in schools but what are you going to do; we have a patchwork quilt of church and state run institutions which form no picture with the Department playing (and losing) catch-up with a decade of unplanned housing developments which never took account of the educational infrastructural needs of the new residents.

So it’s not just financial - it’s structural. But even at a financial level - we have a gaping hole to fill. According to the OECD’s Education at a Glance, we would need to increase our education expenditure by nearly 25% just to reach our peer group average in the EU; or nearly €2 billion. And that’s not counting ancillary and R&D expenditure. Tough to do in the best of times, but in these recessionary times?

That puts the issue of tuition fees in some perspective.

So Master O’Keefe goes off, starts rift within rifts within Cabinet, alienating an important and powerful constituency (upper income groups, who vote; not like ‘the poor, the sick and the handicapped’): to what end? There are approximately 70,000 full-time students in HEA institutions. If only the ‘highest income groups’ (the top 20%?) are subject to tuition fees of €5,000 per year, how much would this bring in? €70 million. And that’s probably an over-estimate since many of these undergraduates are already paying fees (i.e. non-EU foreign students). And then there’s the cost of establishing a bureaucracy - at university and Departmental level - to administer the fees. The net income could be a lot less.

Our education system is teetering and tottering and we’re having a debate over a small fraction of the entire education budget. But if the Left thinks this is an opportunity - to exploit Master O’Keefe’s shot foot - it still has questions to answer: how are we going to get the finance to bring our education system up to scratch, never mind the profound structural and policy issues to sort out. And then there’s the health system, public transport, local authority finances, social protection, social housing, pensions - all with no money in the kitty.

Still, let’s enjoy the moment. Let’s ask Master O’Keefe - you want a knowledge economy and now you’re going to charge people to get into it. What the hell were you thinking?