The Higher Education Authority in a submission has stated that leading universities and third level institutions in this State could be privatised. This would effectively mean third level colleges becoming the creatures of big business corporations on which they would be dependent for finance, more or less in the same way as, during the Irish EU Presidency, the Government is relying on Kerrygold to provide free butter for all the EU nosh-ups over the next six months.

What is the Government view on this issue? The Minister for Education and Science said he has no objection to colleges leaving the public system to become private colleges. In The Irish Times, the Minister is quoted as saying that the one caveat he has in this regard is that there would have to be systems in place to ensure that people from disadvantaged backgrounds would be able to get into such colleges and that, therefore, there would have to be scholarships and bursaries as in the American system. This means that working class youth will be sent to beg at the doors of multinationals and major corporations for their third level education.

Is this another of the big ideas of the Minister for Education and Science? Before the Taoiseach accepts this, I caution him that this is the Minister who in his five year tenure at the then Department of the Environment and Local Government lectured us on the need to divert waste going to landfill. We assumed that was by way of major recycling programmes which some have been carrying out for a long time. However, this morning we know what a farce this Minister's policy was when a ship carrying household waste from nine local authorities was impounded in the Netherlands on its way to India. The authorities in Rotterdam were apparently alerted by the smell.

The privatisation of third level colleges would create just as big a mess for our society and its youth. Can the Taoiseach state precisely the Government view on this issue?

I do not know what County Kerry did wrong this morning. A Mayo Deputy wanted to stop marinas in County Kerry and now a Kerry man wants to stop the promotion of butter from Kerry.

He has been a long time out of Kerry.

On a point of order, I did not want to stop marinas. I questioned the spending of money.

That is not a point of order.

The Taoiseach should stop the gravy train.

Deputy Kenny is against the west. He is against Knock Airport.

I did not try to stop the marina.

Allow the Taoiseach to speak. The Deputy has put his disclaimer on the record.

What we are trying to do is build the marina.

I did not try to stop the marina.

That is fine. If the Deputy did not try to stop the building, we are both in favour of it.

Why was it knocked down?

It had to comply with planning regulations, as does every other development.

We are not building it.

Deputy Higgins made two points on the education report. There are many proposals on how we should continue to do what we are doing successfully, that is, to increase the number of people going through third level education. There are no proposals to privatise any third level colleges. There are many proposals to try to increase the participation of people from all classes in third level colleges and to ensure we can link up, wherever possible, with private business to allocate resources to help research and development and the advancement of third level colleges. This is generally seen as a good thing. It happens all over the world. It is particularly successful in the United States, where the most advanced colleges have such participation.

On the shipment of waste, I understand the difficulties in regard to the consignment of waste referred to centre around the appropriate classification of the assignment of shipments in which recycled materials are segregated.