Ireland’s higher education institutions should shift their focus toward delivering courses and qualifications abroad, rather than concentrating on attracting ever-larger numbers of international students to come and study in Ireland, the Minister for Higher Education, James Lawless, has said.
Speaking in Hong Kong at the end of a week-long visit to China, which also took him to Shanghai and Beijing, Mr Lawless acknowledged the traditional approach of recruiting large numbers of international students to Irish campuses is running into real difficulties. “We’re aware that there are challenges in the traditional model of international students coming to Ireland en masse,” he said. “And while many bring great diversity and skills and knowledge to the system, there are pressures as that model scales in terms of resource consumption, student accommodation… visas can be problematic at times – all the things that we’re familiar with.”
Instead, the minister said he was promoting an alternative model already being used by a number of Irish third-level institutions, which have formed partnerships with Chinese colleges to deliver qualifications on the ground in China. These qualifications are recognised both in China and across the European Union, allowing students to gain an Irish-linked education without needing to travel to Ireland at all.
A central reason behind the shift, Mr Lawless explained, is that Ireland simply does not have enough student accommodation for the students already in the system, let alone capacity to keep expanding the number of international arrivals. Housing pressures affecting the wider population have been repeatedly linked to a shortage of purpose-built student accommodation, making it harder for the country to keep scaling up the traditional model of large-scale international recruitment.
While in China, Mr Lawless also signed a memorandum of understanding on research cooperation, part of a broader push to deepen academic and research links between Irish and Chinese institutions, even as the approach to student mobility itself is being reconsidered.
Back home, Mr Lawless said he is separately pushing, as part of pre-Budget negotiations, for an expansion of the eligibility criteria that determine which families can get financial help with student fees. Currently, households can qualify for a €500 payment from the State toward the student contribution charge if their income falls below €120,000, a threshold that was itself raised from €115,000 as part of Budget 2026. Mr Lawless argued that this threshold should be even higher for families who have more than one child in higher education at the same time.
Defending the case for a higher threshold, he pushed back on the idea that families earning six-figure salaries do not need support. “Some people might say that’s very generous, families with six-figure earnings don’t need support. But, actually, if you look at it, that’s actually very much a middle-income family now in many cases,” he said. He pointed out that once costs like mortgage repayments and childcare are taken into account, “paying student fees on top of that out of a gross salary is a stretch and is a challenge” for many households, even those on relatively high incomes.
The comments add to a broader pre-Budget conversation already underway around further and higher education funding. Other ministers have separately been pushing for additional support with third-level fees and the return of one-off energy credits in the upcoming Budget, while the sector continues to grapple with separate pressures, including a growing dispute over teacher pay that could lead to school closures on selected days in the coming weeks.
With Budget negotiations continuing and no final decisions yet confirmed, it remains to be seen how much of Mr Lawless’s push, both for a fresh look at Ireland’s international education model and for expanded family fee supports, will make it into the final Budget package later this year.
