“I’ll let you in on a little secret tonight on my Insta Live. I think we need to really phase out third-level fees. I’ve strong views on that.”
The year was 2024. The month was November. As the students of Ireland were tucking themselves into beds in their childhood bedrooms countrywide, or in shared rooms in damp flats, or as their phones were precariously close to their faces under duvets on friends’ couches, or perhaps they were already asleep because their college commute would begin in pitch darkness in the early hours of the following morning, Fine Gael leader Simon Harris was on Instagram again: “When you see our manifesto at the weekend, you’ll see how we intend to do that too.”
Cut to that manifesto: “Fine Gael will: Phase out Student Contribution Fees: We will continue to decrease the Student Contribution Fee over the Government’s term, easing the financial burden on students and families at the start of each academic year.”
[ Students condemn potential €1,000 rise in third-level feesOpens in new window ]
Cut to the programme for government, same thing.
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Cut to now. Fine Gael is in Government again. The Minister of State for Further Education is James Lawless, a Fianna Fáil member, barrister and landlord, born in the 1970s and educated in Trinity College and King’s Inns.
Turns out Harris’s reign as Tánaiste will not be marked by a sustained fall in student fees. Turns out Fine Gael and Harris will be part of a Government that, in effect, increases those fees by €1,000.
The €3,000 annual “student contribution” has been lowered to €2,000 for the past three years, but this “cost-of-living support” may now be scrapped, in which case more than half of third-level students would pay higher college fees this year. A final decision has not been made.
In March, Lawless said that cuts to student fees – as declared in the Programme for Government – were “not fair or proportionate”. And yet abolishing student fees was a key campaign message of both Harris and Fine Gael to lure the youth vote, or what’s left of it, considering a good deal of it is now in Australia.
The thing students need to understand is that Lawless doesn’t believe that previous reductions emerging from the pandemic era were ever going to last. He has said as much. He said that the cut from €3,000 to €2,000 was “not intended to be a permanent solution or to become part of the fabric”.
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Again, the programme for government states: “The Government will ... continue to reduce the Student Contribution Fee over the lifetime of the Government to ease the financial burden on students and families at the start of each academic year, in a financially sustainable manner.”
It appears that the Government’s version of “a financially stable manner” when it comes to reducing something is increasing it.
Lawless is using the excuse of the student accommodation crisis for this proposed 33 per cent increase in fees, saying it would add more money for building student apartments.
There is no shortage of money to build housing. That’s not the issue. The issue is policy. Purpose-built student accommodation – much of it plonked in working-class areas of the capital where young people face numerous obstacles in progressing to third level – has failed as an intervention in the housing market because it’s unaffordable.
Scrolling through the options for student accommodation in Dublin right now, and all of them are expensive. A 12sq m room – about the size of a parking space – in one student accommodation block costs €254 a week to rent. Listed features include a coat hook and “adjustable lighting by the bed”.
If you wanted to rent a one-room apartment in Highfield House close to the TUD Grangegorman campus, with a separate bedroom, bathroom, and living area, that will cost you €643 a week, €25,077 for 39 weeks (excluding “service charges”).
The student movement should, and I presume will, fight this proposed cruel increase. It comes on top of exorbitant rent costs, a cost-of-living crisis that cripples students, means lectures are missed because of long commutes, denies social life because they can’t live close to where they study or share homes with friends.
It’s an increase that will exert even further pressure on them to earn more cash working extra shifts and additional jobs while they’re meant to be studying, building relationships and enjoying life.
In tandem with the proposed fee increase, some changes to grants were announced. The proposed increase in the threshold for student fee grants will mean those whose “reckonable income” is below €115,000 will be eligible for a €500 grant. This means little if the fees themselves are to increase by €1,000. A 15 per cent increase in maintenance grants is also proposed.
Many students now view going to university as a stepping stone to emigration. People in their 20s and 30s are denied independence, autonomy, privacy and a sense of self-worth by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil housing policy. They are denied the opportunity to envisage a future in this country. They are gaslit by the Government, lied to, disregarded and patronised.
They are meant to feel lucky that they’re not paying the exorbitant kinds of fees we see in the United States and United Kingdom, as if that’s an acceptable comparison. It’s no wonder students and graduates turn away from the political sphere – and a future in Ireland – and towards Terminal 2.
