Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Buchanan): We have Ms Caoímhe McNeill, Ms Chloe Patterson and Mr Matthew Carson. We will give you 10 minutes in which to make your presentation, and then I will open it up to questions.

Ms Caoímhe McNeill (Queen's Students' Union): Thank you for having us here today. It is a great opportunity for us to be before you. We appreciate the time that you are taking to hear our views, particularly on funding and finance. I am the president of Queen's Students' Union (QUBSU); Chloe Patterson is the vice president for welfare; and Matthew Carson is a first-year student.

We will give you an introduction to Queen's Students' Union. I will talk about what our students think about funding and finance, the funding of higher education and the financial arguments around it, the strength of the student voice and what we are doing around the Big Conversation, particularly in the lead-up to an Assembly election. Chloe will touch on monthly payments and their frequency, postgraduate and part-time loans and the cost of living for students. Matthew will give a student perspective on why he has come to university and on the value of education for him.

A lot of people wonder what goes on behind the doors of the students' union at Queen's. I will give you an overview. We are a membership-led organisation. We are democratically elected every year to lead the students' union (SU) and to represent the 23,000 students at Queen's. We run grass-roots student campaigns throughout the year, which can be on anything from mental health, education initiatives or equality through to one of our big campaigns that has taken off this year, the fossil free campaign. That is being led from the grass roots of students, alongside university staff, on divestment from fossil fuels. Some 2,700 students engage with our enterprise activities in the students' union. That includes 122 students in business clinics who are getting one-to-one advice on how to start their own business, and some do that while they study at Queen's.

Last year, approximately 5,000 students volunteered directly with us. We are aware that that is a small proportion of the students who volunteer, but those students have engaged with the volunteer SU department. Over 11,000 students are involved in almost 200 clubs and societies. There is a lot of engagement with the students' union on a number of levels, and much of it is about skills, development, students coming into their own and discovering the things that they are interested in and growing while they are at university.

I will move on to what our students think about education. Council policies are passed every year, and our students have always felt very passionately about education funding. Indeed, that is evident in a number of current policies that were passed by our SU council in recent years. Our students believe that education is fundamental to the creation of a fair society. Today's students are the leaders of tomorrow, yet our Government are disinvesting in our education. We believe that the Government should be actively investing in education and that further funding is an investment in the future of Northern Ireland. We need to invest in the people who will shape our future. Education should be free and fully accessible to all. QUBSU agrees with DEL that higher education should be open and accessible to all on the basis of ability and attainment rather than background or circumstances. However, unless funding mechanisms are reviewed and higher education is adequately funded, that will cease to be the case in Northern Ireland. We believe that education should receive adequate public funding. Time and time again, our students have reiterated their belief that education needs proper public funding. That is a key issue for them, particularly coming up to an Assembly election. Furthermore, our SU council believes that funding levels should be increased to ensure that all students benefit from the highest possible quality of education and student experience. Our policy states that access to higher education should be based on ability not affordability and that higher education is a right and not a privilege.

One of our core beliefs in the students' union is that higher education is a right. A student's right to attend university should be based on his or her academic ability, and finance should not be a barrier. People should not be prevented from accessing higher education because of their inability to afford it or their fear of entering into debt. I have taken snapshots of those issues from our current policy, which is available on our website if you are interested in reading a bit more.

I will now move on to the funding of higher education, why it is important and why the Northern Irish Executive should prioritise it. DEL has said that, by 2020, 52% of the workforce will require a sub-degree or higher qualification. Higher education is rapidly becoming a necessity to our future and to our employment. It is a necessity that is struggling to exist in the current financial climate, so it must be an Executive priority to address the current financial model of the higher education sector. We simply cannot afford to continue to disinvest in higher education. It is becoming an ever-increasing necessity that our Government must adequately fund so that our graduates can best serve society and the societal demand for workers with third-level education can be met.

It is a known fact that higher education is of benefit to our society. It provides employment to thousands and develops highly skilled employees, which is a key commodity here. It is also an opportunity for people to grow and to develop themselves, to widen their world view and to become global citizens and people who will shape our society and bring Northern Ireland forward. We believe that higher education needs to be equally accessible to everyone and not be classist.

Only yesterday, the Equality Commission revealed that inequality in education has worsened since 2007. To be honest, that completely shocked me to the core. We should be proud of our education system here and in particular the work that the institutions in Northern Ireland are doing on widening participation to education. However, cuts to our higher education budget are having a detrimental impact on our students, particularly those from a lower socio-economic background, and, in the last eight years, our education sector has been regressive rather than progressive. Inequality is rising.

The ideological argument that education should be free and accessible to all rings loud in Northern Ireland now more than ever. We are on the brink of higher education returning to a severely classist system, and I urge you to do all that you can do to bring it back and make it accessible to everyone.

Cases have proven that an increase in tuition fees does not work. The rise in tuition fees to £9,000 in England has created problems for the education sector. A Higher Education Commission report states that increasing fees to £9,000 has put the sector on a long-term footing that is far from clear, and it criticises the move for failing to address how to safeguard higher education amid significant and uncertain future liabilities.

Following estimates from the Institute for Fiscal Studies that 73% of graduates in England will not be able to repay their full debt, the Higher Education Commission challenged the sustainability of a system that charges for higher education, particularly at a rate at which the average graduate will not be able to pay back the loan. We cannot afford for that to happen in Northern Ireland.

The English fee system will soon cost the Government more than the previous system, and we cannot afford that here in the future. If we increase tuition fees in Northern Ireland, we are likely to find ourselves in a situation in which the funding model does not pay for itself. We would be in danger of implementing a solution to the current unsustainable funding model that would have an even more detrimental impact in the long term. An increase in fees will not solve the serious issues that face the higher education sector. The current model leaves higher education institutions facing huge budgetary problems. It needs to be changed, and we need to find a solution. Queen's Students' Union believes that a system that is funded publicly and adequately is the way forward. We cannot put the responsibility on students to cover a cost increase for higher education.

What are our options? We can pursue many options, but we call on the Committee to consider the following. A fairer and more progressive taxation policy could see a more equal higher education sector. We cannot argue that higher education is a public good that serves all of society, so, through more progressive taxation, we are validating the fact that higher education is a public good. We realise that taxation is not a devolved issue, but arguments could be made for the devolution of more taxation powers. Furthermore, progressive taxation could take the form of an income-based rate system. We also question whether a reduction in the rate of corporation tax to 12·5% is worth it if we will not be able to produce the skilled graduates needed to enable companies to locate in Northern Ireland. Rather than the Executive having to cut their Budget to offset the reduction in corporation tax, it may be better for the reduction in corporation tax to be smaller and for the moneys not surrendered to the Treasury to be invested in higher education to create a more attractive overall package for potential investors in Northern Ireland. We are the second leading UK region for attracting inward investment, but, if we do not have the skills here, that attraction will diminish.

I feel strongly about challenging the myth that students and young people are apathetic about politics. We are a strong voice. In my time in the students' union, I have seen students using that voice, and they want to use it more and more. We are promoting the Big Conversation to our students in a variety of ways. We are working with the NUS-USI to hold an event at which students and civic society can come together and have an open and frank discussion about the funding challenges that we face. We will be actively engaging our students in responding to the Big Conversation.

As I said, an Assembly election is a huge priority for us. Through a students' union council, our students have instructed us to make adequate public funding a key theme in our work on the Assembly election. Our work on the election has already begun. We distributed over 3,000 voter registration forms in the last two weeks. Our students are taking a very keen interest in using their vote. Throughout the year, we will raise awareness of the election among the student body and take on its views on the key issues facing students today, encourage them to engage actively with candidates and encourage candidates to prioritise our issues. We will reiterate the importance of voting and how to vote, and we have a number of plans to get students voting on the day. We have been working with our colleagues in the South on students registering to vote. Last year, students' unions in the Republic of Ireland registered 27,000 students to vote in the marriage equality referendum. Those students campaigned and voted, and we can see how their involvement in that campaign impacted the outcome of the referendum. We will continue to work with our counterparts this year as nationwide campaigns will be run to register students and mobilise the student voice, north and south of the border, in the lead-up to the Assembly election here and the general election in the South.

I will now pass over to Chloe, who will talk about student finance.

Ms Chloe Patterson (Queen's Students' Union): Thank you, Chair, for the opportunity to address these issues. I know that student monthly payments and postgraduate and part-time loans have been hot topics in consultation responses. I will summarise the students' union consultation responses.

We definitely see the merits of monthly payments rather than the current archaic triannual payment. When I was researching the topic, it was quite hard even to find where that logic came from. Students will be at university for three years. When they get a job, they will be paid monthly. No other job will ask them to do what they are doing while at university. There is no logic for triannual payments. When 18- and 19-year-olds come to university, they have limited financial maturity. On arrival, an average of £2,000 will have been deposited in their account, and many competing businesses are trying to get them to spend their money. When I was a first-year student, I was baffled when the money was deposited in my account. Last night was Victoria Square night. A large number of students uploaded photos of their goodies from the night, and I know that the same students will be coming to me at Christmastime when they have no money to pay their rent. That was the reality when I was in second year.

Many people come back to university as mature students. It was mentioned earlier that students want to improve their income; they leave the workplace in order to improve their education and to get a better job. We are asking those students who often have family commitments, have bills to pay and have been almost institutionalised in how they pay those bills to re-budget and redesign their entire life. That is difficult, and it is not fair.

We have a massive peak in applications in the first semester, because it is the first time that students have received such an amount of money, and they have limited financial maturity. When Christmas comes, they do not know what to do, and, at that time and as the next loan instalment approaches, we have a peak in our student support and hardship funds.

We, as a council, passed a policy for option 3, which is payments right throughout the year; that includes the summer months. I support that because I know that, for many of our students in Belfast, 12-month contracts are the reality. Contracts are not for nine or 10 months; they are for 12 months. They have to pay over the summer. It is not an option now for students to go off and work over the summer. It is not a reality. As I said, the National Association of Student Money Advisers supports the Scottish model. It seems that, today, we are lobbying for the Scottish model for education as a whole; it seems to be the dream. We support that as well. We believe in the upfront payments, which would cover deposits and course costs, which I will come to later. The Scottish model does not pay over the summer, but, at the moment, the reality is that you have five months between your April payment and your September payment; whereas, with the Scottish model, it is two months. If it came to that, we would support it. However, we support all-year-round payments just to cover the basic costs over the summer.

To be honest, an issue with this, which seems to be a prevailing issue today, is that we are playing around with money. There is not enough money. Living costs — I will come to the slide later — are just going up and up. When I was a student, I got about £4,500. At times, if I did not have a part-time job, I would not have been able to afford my studies. That is a reality. I know that a lot of students cannot afford to get part-time jobs because of their courses, whether nursing or medicine, and are going through terrible times. The underlying issue that comes through is that there needs to be more money for maintenance loans for those students. It is not sufficient or adequate. We need to address that.

The next slide deals with postgraduate and part-time loans. I am a firm believer in postgraduate study. As Caoímhe mentioned earlier, DEL has stated that, by 2020, more than half the population will have an undergraduate degree. Postgraduate study is becoming a necessity if you want to differentiate yourself in the job market. We believe in option 3, which would allow for £10,000 rather than just tuition fees. We believe that the £10,000 would allow a bit of financial freedom so that you could pay your tuition fees, but you could also pay your living costs and bills. We believe that it should be offered as an extension of the undergraduate loan rather than as a separate loan because we want students to carry on from undergraduate straight into postgraduate study. It makes sense to put it all together rather than have two separate loans when they leave and the debt burden that will be on them. The average cost of a postgraduate taught degree at QUB is £5,000, so, as I said, £10,000 would adequately cover that as well as sort of sufficiently covering their living costs; it would go a long way to help anyway.

Finance is a massive barrier to further education in the HE sector. Often, the only resort is a professional development loan, which is not an option for many people, as you have to be eligible for it. As I said, option 3 allows the freedom to pay tuition fees and a small maintenance grant to live on. A major part of that is that we need the regulation of fees. There is no point in allowing this money and then the fees being hiked up; they would just cancel each other out. We, as the students' union, call for the regulation of fees for postgraduate study and part-time loans. I will mention that as I go on to part-time loans.

We also ask for scholarships to be maintained; they are few and far between, but they also act as a massive incentive. I will speak later in my presentation about a course that had offered a scholarship but which has now been taken away. I know that, in this day and age, when I go to look at postgraduate study, I will be looking for scholarships. It is such a massive incentive. We ask for that to be maintained as well.

I would like to give you some statistics from the students' union's perspective: in July alone, our advice centre, which is a fantastic service — I am obviously going to sing its praises, but it is a fantastic service — had 34 prospective postgraduate taught students come in to see us, and 28 of those cases surrounded postgraduate taught and part-time postgraduate funding. It is massively on people's minds when they are making this decision. We need to allow a more equitable approach to this to break down the barriers to access to postgraduate education.

On part-time loans, we prefer option 2, which is a top-up tuition fee that also maintains the grant that they receive. Part-time education is such a fantastic opportunity to widen participation. Often, we get students in for this who come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and who come from the workplace as well. Anecdotally, my sister is considering coming back to do a part-time postgraduate degree because she works, has just got married and wants to further her education. We prefer option 2 because it reduces the debt burden on students. In the NUS-USI Pound in Your Pocket survey, which I will come to later, finance is always a massive issue. Again, anecdotally, my sister is considering the costs and a brand-new house and thinking about what she will put more money into. It is such a key part of widening access to university education, which I know has been touched on many times this morning. We really call for and advocate this.

I know that a concern for the DEL consultation committee was to cap the number of years so that students would not take 20 years to fulfil their degree or get their credit accumulation and transfer scheme (CATS) points. However, universities often place a limit on that anyway. It is not as though it is not a valid concern, but it is being dealt with already. We understand that.

To support that, we had a motion in council calling for fair access to student finance and support. Access to postgraduate education as well as part-time undergraduate education is becoming more critical in a world that demands continuous professional development throughout working life. That is something that our students have already been campaigning for and have done so throughout the year. I want to go back to the consultation. Because a part-time course will happen over many years, and DEL has put the proposal before that students should start to pay back those funds before they have graduated, we believe that it should be optional. We think that if a person is in employment and can pay it back, so be it. However, we do not think that it should be a necessity for them because they are already paying for the burden of their studying as well as for their commitments outside study — that is the nature of a part-time course. They will be working and paying bills and paying for families.

My case study is the MA in Legislative Studies and the Northern Ireland Assembly Legislative Studies and Practice programme. I am sure that many of you know what this is, but for those who do not, it is a prestige programme that we have. There are six students, one of whom is a Fulbright scholar, who work Monday to Thursday in the Assembly and across a range of Departments. More than likely, they will help to contribute to a lot of the work that you do. It is a prestigious programme, and we have students on it at the moment. Until this year, it was fully funded by the Assembly, which was very generous of it. However, funding has been completely cut. I am sure that you know that.

I understand that we are in a horrible economic time. Fortunately, the university has stepped in and offered part-payment for the tuition fees and a small maintenance grant, but essentially these students, who are working for nine months, Monday to Thursday, are working for the equivalent of £60 a week. They cannot afford to eat or travel, and they cannot get a professional development loan because of the nature of the course. To be honest, they are in a horrible situation. I really sympathise with them. They are doing actual, proper work, but it is essentially for free. It is free labour. All that these students are asking for is potentially a day to be taken off the week, so that they can get a part-time job to fund their studies, for some money for their lunch during the week, or for a travel allowance. I ask the Committee to mull over that. If you see any of them in the canteen, feel free to buy them a wee lunch some time. [Laughter.]

The next slide relates to the cost of living. I think that this is a really interesting statistic. From July, since I came into the position of welfare officer, our advice centre has helped students to gain access to £56,432·84 that they were entitled to, whether through benefits or grants. That is what it has helped them to do, which is so impressive. It also makes you realise what need there is out there for money. The NUS-USI Pound in Your Pocket survey, which is always cited and which is such a valuable piece of consultation, found that 37% of our students have seriously considered leaving their course — all due to money. That has been consistent across the groups: FE, HE, undergraduate and postgraduate students all have that major concern. Quite often, there are hidden course costs, and there has been a clear association between high course costs and low well-being. Thirty-seven per cent have considered leaving the course due to finance, and 50% of NUS-USI respondents stated that they were worried that they could not pay basic utility bills or rent.

We, as a students' union, will this year become an official referral agent to a Storehouse food bank, so there is a clear need out there. Anecdotally, I have heard that we have students who have gone days without eating because they cannot afford to eat before their next loan instalment. I cannot emphasise it enough. I know that Belfast is probably one of the cheapest cities to live in, but it is not for those students. With all the pressures going on around them and with their living costs, our students are literally starving at times, and we are referring to the food bank to help them. I ask you to consider that as well. I will hand back to Caoímhe.

Ms McNeill: Matthew will now give a bit of his personal experience.

Mr Matthew Carson (Queen's University Belfast): Thank you for having me here to speak today. First, I want to talk a little bit about the view that third-level education is a necessity. The view is very prevalent among students and people of my age that they need a university education. That message comes from Government and DEL; it comes from the Governments in NI and in GB that a degree education will provide a better life and a better future for people. It is a view that comes from Departments and from society as a whole. Caoímhe mentioned business and its role in supporting that view. It is important that we have this conversation about student finance and funding to make sure that we invest in it properly.

Students value higher education, certainly from my point of view. The first reason is the obvious one: employability, opening doors, and allowing new career pathways — basically creating options. I am the first person in my family to go to university, so, for me, it is about social mobility and things like that. Students value that. That is the thing that comes to mind first, but it is also really important that we do not forget about the cultural and social aspects of university, which are very important for students. It is important that they are allowed to participate in the cultural and social aspects, given that, for many people from here, university is the first chance to meet different people and experience diversity. It is important that we have people in our society who have experienced that and who have learned to get on with many different types of people.

Society as a whole, as well as students, should value education, because, ultimately, it is a public good, as a highly educated, skilled workforce will help to create a high-wage, high-skill economy, and that benefits everyone. It is simple. That is why we invest in higher education in the first place as a society.

In the last part I want to talk a little bit about loans, debt and student life. In my experience, having just made the transition to university and having had a lot of conversations with friends and peers, I feel that funding and finance is probably the main concern of people. I talk to a lot of people who have chosen to do courses in Northern Ireland rather than go to GB or the Republic because it was cheaper and easier here. They were doing courses that they might not have wanted to do so much, but they were afraid to take on that level of debt. The worrying thing is that, if tuition fees were to rise here, where would those people go? Would they just not go to university in the first place? That would be a huge shame for society.

Chloe talked a little bit about those at the lowest end of the spectrum, what we do and what we think about them; however, it is important to point out that there is a group of students whose household incomes are just on the threshold. They do not receive a student grant but a small student loan. In many ways, they really suffer the most from the system as it is, because although their parents may be comfortable they do not have the money to finance their child's rent, food and all the things that a student loan is supposed to pay for. It is important to pay attention to that group and think about what we can do to ease that, because, in my experience, it is people like that who often struggle the most and have to take on a ridiculous number of hours in their part-time job, for example, not for extravagances, but just to pay the rent and survive. That is all that I have to say from a student perspective.

Ms McNeill: I want to thank you again for taking the time to listen to us. We all know how you politicians like social media and interacting with us on that, so if you want to follow us on Twitter or Facebook I will leave the details there for you to check us out. You will find a bit more information about our policies and our constitution on our website if you want to read a bit more about our stance on education funding. Thank you again for your time.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Buchanan): Thank you for your presentation. I will open the session up to questions. I will go straight to Claire, who is itching to ask you some very serious questions.

Ms Sugden: That was a fantastic presentation. The previous one was very good — no offence, Tony — but this was the one that really matters. You are the people who are telling us what this institution means and how it develops you in your lives and your future careers. It was a really great presentation. Very well done.

Caoímhe, I want to come straight to you about the Assembly elections. I want you to go out there and do that loud and proud because the people who vote in Northern Ireland will not change the future of this place; it is the new people like you who will do that. I am one of the youngest Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly, and I must admit that I find it quite difficult to engage with young people; I am really unsure how to do it. I go into schools to chat to people, and I take electoral register forms hoping that they will vote for me, but if they do not, at least they are voting.

How do you suggest I engage with university students? How can I or indeed the other 107 MLAs who represent this country do that as an elected representative? Sitting in front of the Committee is one way of engaging. How do you do that? Ringing up MLAs one to one is another way of doing it. I will go through my questions first, and then you can come back and answer them.

Ms McNeill: OK. I will just take notes.

Ms Sugden: I agree with what you said about postgraduate courses. When I finished my undergraduate degree at Queen's I wanted to go on to do a master's in Irish politics, but I could not afford it, so I had to do it part-time, which split the cost over three years. When I paid for it, I had to split it over the four months in those three years, but it was still £300 coming out of my bank account every month, which was quite significant. I had to work; I was working three jobs at the time, and I was exhausted and not getting to classes.

I agree with you that an undergraduate degree is something that almost everybody gets nowadays. To make yourself competitive in a job market, you need to go after a postgraduate qualification. I am also studying for my second master's at Ulster University, but it is about finding the time to do it. I did my second master's because it was part of continuing professional development, and I saw that as necessary. You made a really important point in that regard.

We have our own student, Amy Barr, who is doing an MA in Legislative Studies. I am going to embarrass her because when I was doing my undergraduate degree at Queen's I was a guinea pig for that master's, and I did a semester at the Northern Ireland Assembly. The Committee that I worked in embarrassed me, but you are very welcome anyway, Amy.

To end on a negative note, it is really sad that students are accessing the food bank. I imagine that it is the same in Coleraine, which I represent, where there is a university campus. Do you have figures for that? That would be quite a big wake-up call.

Ms Patterson: I do; I can send them to you. Our advice centre records them. The figures are not high at the moment, but we are starting back into the semester. The food bank was set up only in the last semester, so I imagine that it will grow when people realise that it is there. I can send you figures for the past three months.

Ms Sugden: I have taken on board a lot of what you said. It was not that long ago that I was doing my undergraduate degree. You are right: the student loan came in September, and I went straight down to the town centre and spent an awful lot of it in River Island, which was ridiculous. I did not know any better, and, come December, I had to go to student support to ask for a loan because I was worried that I could not pay my rent. It makes sense; you get paid monthly, not quarterly, and, if anything, it encourages students to think about the future and how they deal with their finances. I take on board everything that you have said. Well done.

Ms McNeill: I will touch on the things that you said at the end and then go back to your questions. For two years, I was the vice-president for equality and diversity for the students' union, and I represented a wide range of under-represented groups of students in Queen's. One of the key groups was international students. We found that many of them were those who came into the advice centre, needing financial and academic help. The financial worries that international students faced were scary. I remember meeting and working with one student who had not eaten in six days and had been in Elms over the Christmas period, unable to access any sort of support. He could not contact his family for many different reasons. We have an added duty of care to under-represented students who do not get heard as much. I just want to put that on record, in terms of the food bank.

Then there is the issue of student loans. One of the things behind monthly payments, as Chloe said, is the lack of financial maturity. If the current loan system remains, something needs to be done before students come to university. Something needs to be done before students come to university anyway to embed financial education in the curriculum for secondary-school students. Even if there is a change to monthly payments, the breakdown of what you get still will not be enough to last you throughout the month. Students need to know how to budget. If you could do anything on that, it would be great.

Engaging students is something that we struggle with, too. It is just about communicating directly and making things relevant to them; that is what I find. You must talk to them and explain to them what is going on and how it will affect them, whether you talk to them while they are going into lectures or just stop them and talk to them. Social media are a big thing for students; we get a lot of traction for political campaigns that we put on Facebook and Twitter. That is something that you might want to consider. Follow the students' union stuff in particular and you will see more students directly through us in that way.

We will be engaging with MLAs alongside the National Union of Students and the Union of Students in Ireland and will be meeting MLAs and candidates in the lead-up to the election. I am working through all our MPs and have written to them all and have arranged meetings with some of them about the cuts to maintenance grants in England. We hope to get a good response to our opposition to that. It is our intention to meet as many MLAs and candidates as possible in the lead-up to the election.

Ms McGahan: Thank you for your presentation. You are here to give a student's perspective; I can give you a parent's perspective. I have an 18-year-old who is in first year at university here. She gets handouts every week. We get an industrial wage, so I am feeling it as a parent. Her books for one module cost £100; she has four modules, so that is a big issue. I agree with educating students about budgeting. I do not know what she has left in her student account — she will not tell me — but, if she is looking for handouts every week, it cannot be too good. I studied for a master's, and I know that you get funding as a postgrad. I was then the mother of a very young baby and struggled with childcare, so my family had to pay for that. I know that there are big issues for young single parents who are studying at universities.

Caoímhe, you said that you feel that young people are apathetic about politics, but I do not believe that they are, from talking to my daughter and to people of her age group. My daughter studied A-level politics, and she was always of the view that young people do not actually know that there is a Government here in the North of Ireland. That is her view. She gave me some scary stories about how some of the young people did not know who their politicians were. Even more importantly, people do not connect politics to bread-and-butter issues. How do we get the message across that politics is about such issues? It is not about fancy strategies up in Stormont; it is about bread-and-butter issues. We can deliver and improve people's quality of life, but trying to get that message across is difficult. Even at last year's election, a number of young people I engaged with had no interest. I asked to talk to them, but they were not interested.

I really want to get that message across. For example, in Dungannon town in my constituency, there are five post-primary schools, and all you get is, "There is nothing for young people". I got statistics from the police on the number of young people who get cautions, and all you get is, "There is nothing for young people". I am crying out for young people to engage with us and to tell us what they want. I cannot come up with the initiatives myself. I have been in schools trying to encourage that, but it is very difficult.

I agree with everything you say. As a parent, I feel it, too. I know very practically what you are going through. I am disgusted by how our young people are treated by landlords — absolutely disgusted. I really am disgusted at them having to pay a deposit when the house is in a complete mess and beds are broken. I am absolutely disgusted at how our young people are treated by landlords around Belfast. It is absolutely horrendous how they have to pay out all those deposits for houses that would make you vomit. I have been down there and have seen it at first hand. It would absolutely make me vomit. How dare anybody, including landlords, expect a young person to live in those conditions? It is a disgrace.

Ms Patterson: Housing rights is a key interest of mine. I am a law graduate, so I like advocating. At the students' union, our website and the resources that we have available are fantastic, particularly when it comes to deposits. I have had a lot of students through my door in the past two months to discuss what you mentioned about rogue landlords trying to take away their deposit over something ridiculous. Our advice to students is that, with the introduction of the tenancy deposit scheme (TDS), they have that extra layer of protection from a third party. I was on BBC Ulster speaking about it on Monday night. There is a loophole that says that, when any of our students move to private accommodation, they have to apply for their tenancy deposit certificate within the first six months. A lot of our students do not do that and do not realise that they are not doing it. The TDS and ourselves are trying to work on that campaign.

You mentioned the occasional rogue landlord and whatnot. If a student comes to me about that sort of issue, I usually get on the phone to the landlord and start badgering them. It usually works. I have done that quite a few times over the past few months. I completely agree about the standard of some housing. During my fresher lectures or anything on that, I will say, "Have your wits about you. Look for decent housing. Look for damp. Look for this and that". Hopefully, that is starting to get through, and there will hopefully be a wider campaign on accommodation rights this year, because, as I said, it is a passion of mine.

Ms Lo: I will be very brief. Thank you for your presentation. I commend you on the good work that you are carrying out with students. I particularly want to say hello to Matthew, who came to me for work placement when he was in his fourth year. We have been in touch with him on and off. I am delighted to see that you are now in uni. I know that was your ambition at the time. It is absolutely great to see you here.

I want to make a few comments. I definitely support the merits of monthly payment of student loans. It is really stupid to suddenly give students, for the first time, a large amount of money in their bank account for them to spend. My constituency is South Belfast, and I get a lot of complaints about students drinking too much because they have too much money in their pockets. I was very lucky, compared with those who have student loans. I did my undergrad and postgrad for free. I did social work as well, and we were given a grant of £1,500 a year. That was 20 years ago — in the old days.

I commend you, too, on your good work in encouraging and mobilising students to come out to vote. It is so important that they not only come out to vote but challenge parties, read their manifesto and say whether they are happy with it and what they want to change. That is how you can influence policies.

Ms McNeill: That is the plan anyway.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Buchanan): OK. We are seriously over time, folks. We thank you for your presentation today. Again, all the issues that you raised lie dear to our own hearts. I know exactly the difficulties you as students face, including the financial difficulties and the difficulties with landlords — all those issues have come to our attention. We are absolutely behind you, and we commend you on the work that you are doing. Again, when it comes to, as I said, making your voice heard, you must do that. When you make your voice heard, you will get other people who will sit up and listen, take that on board and see what they can do to help you. Again, thank you very much for your presentation.