Cabinet to scrap all grants for postgrad courses
13 November 2011 by Pat Leahy and Niamh Connolly

The government is to abolish all financial support for new postgraduate students from next year, scrapping existing grants and maintenance support, The Sunday Business Post has learned.

About 40 per cent of all full-time postgraduate students – some 9,000 this year – currently have their fees paid by the state and also qualify for maintenance grants.

From next year, the state support will end for new students, in a move the Department of Education expects will save €50 million a year. Students currently enrolled on courses will be allowed to finish them with their grants for fees and maintenance intact.

The state pays all undergraduate fees and also provides some maintenance grants for 44 per cent of all undergraduate students. However, two-thirds of postgraduates pay fees. Postgraduate students who qualify for grants receive an average of under €6,000 a year in fees and maintenance grants.

The move comes after pressure on education minister Ruairi Quinn to find savings in his department’s €9 billion annual budget. Increasing numbers at primary level, with further increases to come given the high birth rate, will add further to the financial pressure. The funding squeeze is being particularly felt at third level.

The move will increase pressure on Labour TDs, who are already nervous about education cuts. The Sunday Business Post has learned that a group of at least ten Labour Party TDs met last week in Leinster House to discuss their growing concern over the possible re-introduction of college fees.

The meeting, which took place outside the parliamentary party, was described by the deputies as an “informal dialogue and exchange of ideas”. However, there are clear rumblings on the backbenches over the prospect of tuition fees.

One TD who attended the adhoc meeting said it represented “the first sign of a subtle resistance on a specific issue”, while another said that a return to college fees would represent a “red line issue” for many deputies.
Most of the TDs who attended the meeting were elected for the first time in February. They included Waterford TD Ciara Conway, Dublin west TD Patrick Nulty, Clare TD Michael McNamara, Dublin mid-west TD Robert Dowd, Galway east TD Colm Keaveney, Louth TD Gerard Nash and Dublin south TD Alex White.

White described the meeting as “informal”, and played down its significance. But he said that “third level fees and university access was a big issue for the Labour Party, and would be regarded as a highly progressive achievement by the party when last in government”.

Colm Keaveney said there was “nothing sinister about a group in the Labour Party sitting down and talking about any subject. We’re not a centrally-controlled organisation, and it’s about dialogue and the exchange of ideas. Nobody should feel threatened by it and nobody has picked up the phone to say that we cannot do this. Ruairi Quinn has a mature attitude towards the backbenchers”.

Louth TD Gerard Nash said that “we want to ensure that, whatever happens in the budget, that third-level education is open to everyone – we don’t want to return to a situation where it is the preserve of privileged kids”.

The meeting of Labour deputies came ahead of a mass rally of third-level students which is due to be held in Dublin next Wednesday. Gary Redmond, president of USI, said coaches would travel from every third-level college in the country for a rally at the Garden of Remembrance, and a march to Government Buildings on Merrion Street.

Concern is growing in the Labour Party at the prospect of an embarrassing u-turn on a core party pledge given on third-level fees before the general election. Ruairi Quinn signed a pledge on February 21 – four days before the election – not to reinstate student fees, but has declined calls by USI to re-affirm his commitment to the pledge since his party entered government.
It was a Labour education minister, Niamh Bhreathnach, who abolished fees in 1995. Quinn was finance minister at the time.