USI President Gary Redmond argued for a graduate tax.
Ronan Costello
Editor
Trinity College Students’ Union President Ryan Bartlett has criticised the decision of a majority of USI Congress to put off deciding on USI’s new policy on third level funding. The new policy would have come from a preferendum which included a graduate tax, a student loan scheme, the student contribution, 100% exchequer funding and 100% upfront fees, as well as none of the above.
Bartlett’s criticism comes after delegates who opposed a vote on the preferendum successfully argued that the gravity and consequences of the decision had not been adequately communicated to students, which resulted in ‘deplorable’ engagement from the national student population. This argument was countered by members of USI officer board and representatives of Students’ Unions who had conducted local preferendums, who said that the issue had been communicated as effectively as possible, considering there were only six weeks to consider the options and organise a ballot of members.
USI Education Officer Aengus Ó’Maoláin and incoming NUI Maynooth President Seamus Reynolds made an ideological argument against abandoning USI’s ‘free fees’ policy. Both said that it was counter-intuitive for the organisation to abandon the policy that best served students’ interests. Framing third level education as a human right, Ó’Maoláin said that the ‘realists’ who were advocating a graduate tax or student loan scheme had simply lost hope in the concept of free education through progressive taxation and had adopted a defeatist attitude which would see USI make a catastrophic error were it to completely abandon this viewpoint.
DITSU Deputy President Eric Fitzgerald said that poor turnout in local preferendums did not render the results invalid or undemocratic and that, in many instances, students simply didn’t seem to care. He also admonished those colleges that had not conducted a local preferendum. USI Deputy President Colm Murphy repeated this criticism, saying that it was a ‘disgrace’ that some colleges had not made the effort to consult their members yet assumed a position of opposition to a Congress vote on the funding motion. Fitzgerald said that the assertion that a decision made by Congress on USI’s third level funding policy would be undemocratic was fundamentally false, pointing to the fact that all delegates had been elected by either their local SU council or, in the case of sabbatical officers, a general election.
UCDSU President Pat de Brún and USI President Gary Redmond argued for a graduate tax. De Brún and Redmond said that this would remove the onerous student contribution, which currently stands as the second highest undergraduate fee in Europe, after the UK. Citing their experience, both said that quality of third level of education and equity of access was the paramount consideration in their arguments. They said that a graduate tax would see the sector granted adequate funding while removing the initial barriers to third level education for those who cannot afford the annual student contribution.
TCDSU President Ryan Bartlett, who had argued for a student loan scheme, was deeply disappointed with the result of the debate. “Realistically, if a decision was to be made on this by USI in time to affect budget 2013 then it will have to happen over the summer, where it would likely be decided on by a small number of sabbatical officers. Congress provided the best opportunity to ensure that a decision was made on this issue. A decision that would have been representative of Irish students’ views. Even if a Special Congress is called, there are very few term weeks left across the country. In Trinity we’re already in the last week of term,” said Bartlett.
“The Congress decision would have come as a result of mandates received by various Students’ Unions as well as the considered opinions of elected delegates, who have been representing the views of their students all year.”
With a referendum scheduled on TCDSU’s affiliation with USI, Bartlett said that this move will “only increase the disillusionment of Trinity students with USI, based on the fact that the results of a rare opportunity for them to engage with USI policy-making have been ignored. Criticism of USI will also increase if policy continues to come from the top. This was an opportunity for USI to show that it was moving in the direction that Trinity students have called for. Its failure to do so has once again forced us to question whether USI is capable of being an organisation that truly represents Trinity students.”
