Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 30 March 2023
74. Deputy Peadar Tóibín asked the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science if the Government undertakes any analysis of the number of people from the Traveller community who enter third-level education per year; and if so, if he will provide data on same. [15230/23]
View answerMy Department is committed to supporting equity of access, participation and success for Irish Travellers in Higher Education.
The most recent National Access Plan sets out the situation starkly. 1% of Travellers have a third level qualification, compared to 55% of the population. Collectively, we need to do much better.
Gathering accurate data on Irish Traveller participation in higher education is difficult and is highly dependent on self-identification. The HEA collects data on the number of Traveller students in higher education utilising the Equal Access Survey, which, is an annual voluntary set of questions asked of all first-year undergraduate new entrant students to publicly funded higher education institutions.
The data indicate that there has been a modest rise in the number of Traveller new entrants over time, increasing from 23 in 2011/2012 to 52 in 2021/22. There was, however, a dip in this trend during Covid with only 33 new entrants in the 2020/21 academic year.
Overall Traveller enrolment within higher education institutions has grown from 77 in 2011/12 to 119 in 2020/21. Overall enrolment figures for 2021/22 are not yet available.
The National Access Plan used data from the Equal Access Survey and the Census to set a targets of increasing the number of Travellers in higher education to 150 by 2028. This target, and progress towards it, will be reviewed in a Mid-Term review in 2025. My aim will be to make sufficient progress, in close collaboration with the sector and Traveller representative groups, to allow a more ambitious target to be included arising from this mid-term review.
To underpin delivery towards this target I established a new strand of ring-fenced funding of €1.35 million over three years. This initiative, PATH 5: the Irish Traveller and Roma Fund, will support progress towards higher level of participation by Travellers and will also support the development of targets for Roma students.
Some 1,310 learners engaged in FET in 2022 self-identified as Travellers and, from a policy perspective, my Department is particularly looking at how we can better support transitions between further and higher education, which is a key route to enhancing participation in higher education.
