More than 1,000 new third-level places to be created to meet demand
More than 1,000 new places in sought-after courses including teaching and nursing will be provided to meet Covid-19 demands.
The Cabinet is due to sign off on the extra third-level spaces when Minister for Higher Education Simon Harris brings a memo on the matter tomorrow.
However, students will have to pay the full €3,000 registration fee this year, even if much of their learning is online. Opposition TDs have been calling on education minister Norma Foley to reduce third level fees for students whose courses will now be taught remotely due to the pandemic.
The memo to be tabled to Mr Harris will allow the Higher Education Authority assign a quota of additional places to each higher institution in proportion with their most recent undergraduate intake. The courses chosen by each institution must be based on demand.
Mr Harris said: "I'm really conscious of the fact that often when somebody comes out of school they say: 'I might take a gap year, I might go to Australia or New Zealand or America and come back and do college later,' that's not really an option in Covid world.
"Others might decide to work for a while and go back to college at a later stage. That may not be an option in terms of employment opportunity so we need to make sure we provide more educational chances.
"I'll be briefing Cabinet on my plan to increase the number of college places this year, and we'll be looking at increasing them in two areas, one area is where this is a societal need, so I think Covid has shown us we need more people in the health service, we need more teachers to lower class sizes; areas like that.
While Mr Harris said he would like to see the registration fee fall, he could not promise that this would happen as part of the upcoming budget.
"I do think the registration fee in Ireland is too high and it is something that I would like to see addressed," he told RTÉ radio.