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College Tribune | October 14th 2008
Comment News
Opinion
FAUSTUS Back Supping with the devils
I
I’m delighted that my old pal Talleyrand took time to acknowledge my return. I was having a chat with the ould scrubber last week, and he asked me how my garden grows? “With the urine of Campaigns and Communications Vice Presidents’’ I replied. That’s right, during a recent drunken moment everyone’s favourite leftie Dan O’Neill went outside for a quick slash, only to be told afterwards that what he thought was a urinal was actually a flowerpot. The next day the object soiled by Danny boy had stemmed a beanstalk even bigger than Jack’s. This phenomenon has baffled plant enthusiasts from the four corners of the globe. Meanwhile, Aodhan O Dea continues to storm around the campus casting evil glares at anyone who dares mention the unholy combination of words (Class Rep). His childish sulks and boycott of the Tribune leaves the cockles of Faustus’ heart warmed contentedly. Reportedly, he hasn’t slept a wink over the last while and was seen pacing the union corridor with Tribune in hand and sporting the world’s straightest monobrow. Perhaps the hackery is just becoming too much… The Good news is that the student movement is back. Activism has been re-activated. Supposedly. Last Monday Min-
ister for Finance Brian Lenihan TD was given a warm welcome by UCD students and any Random crusty willing to express his or her love. Some froze their asses until the final moment, and some went back to the warm realms of the Dail, apologies, the council. The Demo proved to be just a curtain opener for the big march on Wednesday. Distraught at the thought of parting from their booze money 10,000 angry students took the streets of Dublin against the reintroduction of fees. Who says that the only things students are interested in these days are scoring drunken impressionable first years, getting on the guest list for Troiiiipoiid, and American Eagle Sweaters. The protest commenced at the garden of remembrance, and included all colleges ITs and universities in the Dublin region except of course Trinity who have an aversion to crossing the River Liffey. The Trinners instead opted to join the march at Westmoreland St, and even then their SU hacks were reluctant to mix it up with the taigs and fenians from the Catholic University. It’s worth nothing that most of these TCD heads are actually Catholics themselves. They just pretend that they are Protestant in order to fit in with the hierarchy of the holy, undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth, William the Conqueror, Oliver Cromwel, etc. However the protest didn’t please everybody, Brave Mavericks from the UCD Fianna Fail Cumann were reprimanded for going against the party line and joining in the demo. Reports suggests that orders coming from the FF politburo on Mount Street stated that “if any our members try and get in the way of our plans to mess up higher education, we’ll mess them up’’.
Access to third level education is good for the country Personally, the challenge to increase access to third-level education in the 1990s was driven by my own experience as a primary school teacher. In the 60s I was a teacher at Cook Street National School, a school situated up the road from Trinity College. Even then the children of Oliver Bond flats would have qualified for the then grants scheme of free fees and maintenance. But not one student from that school had entered the gates of Trinity College or any other third level institution, as a student, by the time I arrived at the Department of Education, thirty years later. I was by now the Minister for Education in a Fianna Fáil and Labour Government, a government committed to establishing greater access to education for all. It was for them that I put in place my favourite initiatives, Early Start and Breaking the Cycle. Today, it is only after a decade of targeted grants that these students have graduated into a Leaving Certificate class locally, and hopefully, will finish their education at a university near them. For the greater cohort of those attending university, the university grants system has moved on slowly in pace with inflation, the registration fee has been allowed to increase shamefully but the gates that I opened for the undergraduate still remain open. How was this done? For some years fee paying parents of students, over eighteen years of age, had access to a tax covenant scheme. But because no limits applied to a covenant claimed by other relatives or friends it became relatively easy to fund student fees 100%. The dinner party covenant became a real Dun Laoghaire Constituency special. Neighbours funded neighbours’ children. By coveting funds, managers managed to put their children through university, while their employees could not. And many university staff were covenanting the cost of fees while availing of free tuition for their children, a little known staff perk at the time. The extent of the use of covenants outside the 5% limit became evident when a study on the schemes, by Dr. Donal de Buitleir, commissioned by my Department, was completed. The
Niamh Bhreathnach Report recommended many changes to the existing schemes, including the inclusion of assets in a reformed grant scheme. It was difficult to envisage a fair way forward, unless assets could be assessed, but in a tax climate that was positively Ansbacher, to suggest new ways of using the tax system to fund fees was just not practicable. Politics is after all the art of the possible. With de Butleir report identifying the level of abuse, or use of, the existing covenant scheme, I realised that I could meet the commitment in the Programme for Government to give access to Third Level Education fairly quickly if I had access to a growing tax relief fund With the support of the members of the newly formed Labour/ Fine Gael/ DL government, fees were abolished and the tax covenant savings ring-fenced. The gates were opened. I believe that the fact the decision was made without Fianna Fáil makes it easier for their Minister to consider a reintroduction. Would reversing Donagh O’Malley’s introduction of free second level education be even considered by today’s FF followers? It reads like a fairy story of educational success. The participation of left wing politicians in government saw a right to education enshrined in our system. Should we allow this government of Fianna Fáil, the Greens and PD reverse the upwards trend of participation? If education is the key to the individual’s life chances it surely must be the key to our country’s future. Too many government ministers have been quoted as saying that Ireland will continue to invest heavily in education yet the statistics show that since the Labour Party left the Department of Education,
the percentage of investment has fallen. What we must demand of our politicians is that they practice what they preach. Unfashionable as it is to say, we are a low taxation economy (lying 28th in the OECD table on expenditure on education). The European model of funding education and health rely on a more robust taxation system. If we are low on the taxation ladder we cannot expect to be able to provide the investment in third level enjoyed by our EU partners. Their students access third level freely. England saw a sharp reduction in student numbers when Tony Blair introduced a £1,000 fee. To put our attendance numbers in reverse, particularly when we should be planning for an economic recovery and our promised place in the knowledge society would be too short sighted to tolerate. When Minister O’Keefe opened the debate on the fees issue he promised a forensic examination of all areas of investment. USI have successfully pointed out that loan schemes employed in commonwealth countries are not too successful; they are too bureaucratic and too open to abuse. Parents above the income limit are already subsidising your “fee” education. Figures as high as €10,000 have been suggested as the true cost of your years at college. Investing in human capital may sound too Statist for followers of the American neo-con dream but without mineral or industrial wealth our past success was based on use of our demographic advantage in Europe. Discuss, debate, march against the idea of reversing Ireland’s position regarding the right to access to education. Question the shibboleths; we are not investing heavily or even modestly in education, we do not pay the highest tax rates in Europe, human capital is our best way forward and is truly the only answer for Ireland’s future economic success.
» Niamh Bhreathnach is a Labour party councillor and former minister, who was oversaw the removal of third level fees in the mid-90s