College students accuse Government of breaking more promises over contribution fees

Eva Osborne

A students' union has said it should be no surprise that students are emigrating, claiming third-level students are being left behind by the Government.

Over the last three budgets, a cut of €1,000 was applied to the contribution fee for third-level students, but it is expected that it will return to €3,000 this year.

This contradicts a plan set out in the recent Programme for Government, which saw the measure converted from temporary to permanent.

Incoming AMLÉ president, Brian O'Mahoney, said a promise has been broken.

"As always, we have students who are having to work full-time in order to get into class, but not being able to attend classes because they're working full-time," he said.

"[They are] choosing whether they go to class or whether to eat and are sleeping in cars.

"We wonder why students are leaving the country, but when students are so undervalued during their educational cycle, it's no wonder that we want to leave to have a brighter future."

On the contribution fee returning to €3,000, O'Mahoney said it "just shows more broken promises from the government".

"We have seen, in this country, according to an OECD report, out of 34 countries we were ranked the lowest in investment in education.

"The average was 5.7 per cent from GDP in Ireland we spend 2.8, so that's half what the average country in that report spends."