]]> http://www.universityobserver.ie/2011/11/24/photos-from-todays-usi-funeral-protest/feed/ 0 http://www.universityobserver.ie/2011/11/16/20000-students-attend-usi-protest-march/ http://www.universityobserver.ie/2011/11/16/20000-students-attend-usi-protest-march/#comments Wed, 16 Nov 2011 23:23:59 +0000 Katie Hughes, News Editor http://www.universityobserver.ie/?p=16966 Roughly 20,000 students took part in the “Stop the Fees, Save the Grant” march organised by the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) this afternoon, reports Katie Hughes.

The march started at the Garden of Remembrance, continued down O’Connell Street, through College Green and ended outside the Government Buildings, close to where the evening’s sleep-out is being held.

USI President Gary Redmond considered the protest a success and commended students on “[sending] the message very loudly and clearly to the Minister and indeed to the Government that pre-elections promises must be kept”.

The protest was for the most part peaceful, despite some egg-throwing incidents, which according to UCD Students’ Union Campaigns and Communications Officer Brendan Lacey, “isn’t the worst, we didn’t want that kind of thing but you know, a few eggs being thrown is a far cry from what happened last year”.

Redmond maintains that the campaign is far from over and that he intends to see the Labour Party honour their pledge of opposing and campaigning against “any new form of third level fees including student loans, graduate taxes and any further increase in the Student Contribution”.

Lacey echoed these sentiments, saying that “over 10,000 students have used tellyourtd.com and made their feelings known to TDs across the country … even Ruairi Quinn’s tune has changed, although the postgraduate cuts are a crippling blow … we’re taking cuts all the time, we’re taking hits all the time but we’re still campaigning towards the end result and we’re still hopeful and we’re still fighting and I think the campaign is having a telling result, the pressure seems to be hitting home”.

Redmond stated that the Gardaí were pleased with calibre of behaviour at the march, with the Chief Superintendent in charge of the protest intending to issue a press release commending student behaviour.

A breakaway group of Free Education for Everyone (FEE) members was reported to have been blocking the entrance to the Fine Gael National Headquarters at one point during the march. Lacey defended FEE, stating that he did not believe that “FEE, from UCD in particular, from the people that I’ve spoken with would have had any ill-intention towards the march, they seemed very genuine in that regard”. He acknowledged their status as one opposing third level fees and concluded that the only difference was that “they’re doing it in a way that I wouldn’t do sometimes, that’s their free prerogative”.

A sleep-out on Molesworth Street is scheduled for this evening. 1,000 students are expected to attend as that is the maximum capacity of the venue. Lacey is positive that the event will serve to “really drive home the message, it’ll give us that little bit more media attention all through the morning”.

Redmond is also eagerly anticipating the event, expecting it to go as smoothly as the afternoon’s march, “we had a very peaceful protest today, we were exceptionally well prepared, the protest passed off without incident and I expect the sleep-out to do the same”.

Speaking to The University Observer, one student described the decision as “ridiculous” that the Union were “putting it in the middle of a holiday,” complaining [Easter Saturday] is a time I want to spend with my family”.

Earlier in the day, a joint statement from UCDSU and UCD confirmed that the Ball would be going ahead, saying: “Following prolonged and constructive discussions between representatives of the Students’ Union and members of the University Senior Management Team, the Students’ Union feel that we have arrived at an agreement that will satisfy the academic needs of the University while ensuring that the UCD Ball can now go ahead for the new date of Saturday April 23rd on the University running track.

“Both parties acknowledge that cooperation from both sides is essential to ensure the UCD Ball goes ahead as now planned and that the agreement between UCD and UCD Students’ Union is honoured in full by both sides ensuring normal running of the campus on Thursday April 21st and that UCD campus will close on Saturday the 23rd of April to facilitate the UCD Ball.”

Following the revelations that the IUA increased their spending by almost €2million in 2009, Quinton O’Reilly examines the reaction to this news from UCD and IUA representatives

UCD Academic Staff Association

When presented with the information regarding spending of the IUA, a representative from UCD academic staff told The University Observer that he was “gobsmacked” about the figures.

He expressed concern that there was no notice within the university’s books that alluded towards their contribution to the IUA.

“I assume that everybody that’s employed there is getting paid wages coined from the universities but they’re not in the books of the universities so I’m not sure how, it’s almost like a union for presidents.”

While the IUA speak about openness and transparency in their website, the representative mentioned that they are protected from Freedom Of Information (FOI) requests due to their status as a limited company and are not answerable to them.

The representative mentioned that the board of directors were the presidents of each university and were therefore “not answerable to anybody by what I can see”.

He expressed concern at how although the IUA has little day-to-day involvement in the running of any universities, the Department of Education wanted them to be the employers instead of the Higher Education Authority (HEA), despite the Croke Park agreement being in place.

“I was a bit concerned to put it mildly,” he said. “That they were coming up with all my working conditions, my contract has to be torn up and here they’re saying they came from the IUA when they’re one and the same. [In a statement, they] said basically staff at UCD were not unsackable which of course no one ever said we were. My contract says that I can be sacked for all these reasons, but what those fellows want to do is sack you for no reason.”

The representative questioned the validly of the group saying: “They’re a fig leaf for anything the universities want to do but simply say, ‘well the Irish universities association has suggested this,’ despite the fact that it’s sitting around the table with only a few other people who do the suggesting. It’s bit of a surplus isn’t it?”

Ultimately, he believed that sooner or later, questions would be asked about the IUA and their role in Irish universities. “Now what exactly does the IUA do? That’s another question. So that’s why I was absolutely gobsmacked when I pulled down the numbers of the company registration office.”

When asked about what he thought about the university’s refusal to comment, he said, “silence speaks volumes”.

—–

Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT)

The Secretary General of the IFUT, Mike Jennings, expressed his surprise when told that both income and expenditure increased to under €5 million in 2009.

He admitted that he could not explain where any of the funding the IUA received is allocated saying that “in so far as it’s an income and expenditure under the rubric of the IUA, I’m not sure. Obviously it must be more than the university presidents’s rebate but I’m not sure what part of the individual universities rebate [is going] to the IUA that is going to make that overall sum. It could do with a bit more transparency perhaps.”

Jennings stated that the organisation would be helpful if the IUA was called the Irish University Presidents’s Association instead as it would better inform people as to what the organisation is.

He explained that his understanding of the IUA was that they were an association function whose role is “primarily as a spokesperson for the presidents as opposed to being linked in to governing structures of the universities”.

“They are probably linked to similar organisations on a European and international scale,” said Jennings. “I don’t know if you’ve heard of the European Universities Association but it’s essentially just the presidents of the universities. Really, it’s a collective for the presidents.”

He said that alongside that role: “They don’t have any statutory function; they don’t have a body or governing board, which represents anybody else other than the university presidents as I understand it.”

While understanding why the presidents of each university would want to have a collective voice, Jennings felt that such an organisation undermined the concept of what a university should be.

“A university, by definition, is a collegiate entity; a university is the students, is the staff, is the institution. It’s sounds old-fashioned, but it absolutely should be still part of the ethos. A university, if it’s to be anything, it should be a community,” explained Jennings.

“The fact that it only reflects the views of the presidents of each institution seems to me to go against the principle of the collegiate notion and ethos of a university.”

—–

Irish Universities Association

When asked about the cost of UCD’s subscription for the IUA, Chief Executive of the IUA, Ned Costello said: “The university subscriptions are essentially pro-rated to university size, so obviously UCD would contribute more than smaller universities.”

Costello told The University Observer that a collective body such as the IUA was more efficient at dealing with national issues that couldn’t be done by the universities themselves. “There’s kind of a tendency for the state and for government to kind of increasingly want to run the universities,” he explained. “And actually, you need people who kind of argue the toss of where the balance of control lies, which is something that we do.

“There’s an awful lot of the interface between the universities and the state, if I can put it like that, that simply has to be done collectively,” said Costello. “And the administrative overhead to the universities, if they were to respond individually and seriously to all these issues, would actually be far higher than having a body such as the IUA implement them.”

Costello stated that creating the IUA back in 1997 was a necessary for the universities to work together and tackle common issues, saying: “The relationship between the universities and the state was different than to what it is now.”

He referred to the Employment Control Framework from two years ago as an example of the roles the IUA played by “working collectively renegotiated that into something that was a lot more flexible and that’s something that, for example, UCD could not have gone in and done by itself.”

Costello justified the jump in expenditure during a recessionary period by claiming the cost of their projects had risen during that period.

When asked what those projects were, he referred to the Higher Education Access Route (HEAR) and Disability Access Route to Education (DARE) schemes as well as Full Economic Costing, where they calculate the real running costs of a university, as examples.

When asked about the hiring of two extra administrative staff in 2009, Costello stated that the IUA would, if necessary, have to hire extra staff to properly run these projects.

“We have two support staff here out of the total 14 or 15 people that we have here, so I’m quite happy to say we’re extremely lean when it comes to admin staff; as in support staff,” stated Costello. “As regards whether hiring staff was appropriate or inappropriate, we’re contracted to run projects, so if we enter into a contract with the HEA to run projects on sectoral areas of major significance like full economic costing, then obviously we have to hire the staff to run the projects.”

He confirmed that their office premises located in Merrion Square is rented but declined to comment on how much it cost per annum.

Breakdown of IUA finances

2009

Funding receivable: 4,841,846

Administrive expenses: 4,517,503

Number of administative staff: 15

Wages and salaries: 1,444,567

Social welfare costs: 107,341

Other pension costs: 113,131

Bank interest receivable: 116,798

Other: 150,000

Funding receivable: 2,893,100

Administration expenses: 2,912,894

Number of administrative staff: 13

Wages and salaries: 1,261,655

Social welfare costs: 81,183

Other pension costs: 87,870

Bank interest receivable: 104,656

Other: 150,000

The campaign is now active in 33 education institutions in the Republic and Northern Ireland, and a national steering committee is being put in place to strategically direct the campaign.

Please Talk reaches out to students in 3^rd level education and offers information on counselling services in their specific college or university, with the simple slogan “talking is a sign of strength, not weakness”.

UCD Students’ Union Welfare Officer Scott Ahearn believes this boost is necessary: “It’s great with the campaign being in so many colleges, but we need to look at them all together to re-energise the message, so everyone’s on the same page.”

However, Please Talk has been involved in controversy. In 2008, questions were asked over the massive grants that the initiative received from the HSE. When questioned about this, Ahearn stated that all accounts have been verified: “You can look at what happened in the past, but I think what is much more important is that finally we look forward.”

Please Talk was founded in UCD in 2007, in response to a number of student deaths on campus. The recently appointed Chairperson of the campaign, Aisling O’Grady, expressed her delight at the progress that the campaign has been making in UCD. O’Grady again emphasised the simple message: “What it is, is two messages, one, talking is really important, as well as sharing any issues and concerns you have. Secondly, this is how to get in touch with people who will help you, from your college.”

The Please Talk website has been redesigned, and the amount of students that it is reaching is at an all time high. Ms O’ Grady said: “I don’t think any campaign is ever perfect, but we’re doing our best to reach out to as many students, and it’s about 330,000 students now, through this campaign, through something which started in UCD, from people who cared in UCD, that is now going out to those 330,000 students.”

Please Talk is funded by both the HSE and fundraising. Ms O’Grady, however, maintained that although funding was an important issue, Please Talk was not to be mistaken for a “lobbying group”: “I don’t see that as the Please Talk role. It is a group of people, of communities, of students and staff, who work with young people coming together to say, please talk to us.”

The campaign is also working in conjunction with outside agencies such as reachout.com in organising national mental health weeks. Aside from Remembrance Day on November 1^st this year, a candle-lit vigil is being organised to commemorate students who have passed away.

With regards the future of the campaign, Ahearn stated: “It’s important that people realise, looking at the message that Please Talk sends, that idea of being aware of student supports, and that we’re there for them, that’s the most important thing.”

The attack, originating from an unidentified source, means that the CAO website is being deliberately bombarded with traffic from a malicious source, rendering the site unable to handle traffic from legitimate student users looking to view the list of points required for Round 1 CAO offers, or to accept college places.

Copies of the CAO points list have been made and can be accessed here. The CAO says that it has already processed about 8,000 acceptances of the 48,000 college offers it offered this morning, and that its website will be back online by lunchtime.

When potential college-goers do get to view their points, they will see a marked increase in the points required for many courses across the country – and particularly in UCD.

The undergraduate Science course points stand at 435 – up a full 50 points on last year – while Arts, the largest undergrad course in Ireland, is up 5 to 365.

Points for Medicine have risen to 725 – meaning that students will need to have received 550 Leaving Cert points, and have scored 175 out of a possible 300 on the HPAT aptitude test. The demand for other medical and paramedical courses has also increased, with Physiotherapy up to 535 and Radiography to 525.

Overall, the points required for entry to UCD courses have risen in 56 cases.

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Students’ Union President Gary Redmond has expressed his satisfaction at the survey’s findings, describing the result as “a clear indication that the people of Ireland want third-level education to remain free.” He also said that the results “fly in the face of Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe’s previous proposals to re-introduce tuition fees, and his repeated remarks that the issue will revisited at the end of his Government’s term.”

When asked how the results of the poll might be used, Redmond said that the SU planned to “use the results of surveys to influence how we work with ongoing campaigns and future campaigns, and also how we may direct our lobbying.”

1,000 adults – including samples from a diverse range of age groups and from various geographical bases around the country – were questioned as part of the survey, which was conducted by telephone. The strongest support for continued state funding of third-level fees came from the 18-24 year-old age group.

However, before the results were published, Redmond was reticent to comment on whether or not the SU were carrying out surveys relating to public opinion on third-level education. When previously questioned, Redmond said that “there’ll be a number of issues and I’m not going to say whether fees is or isn’t something we’ve been polling on, but certainly we’ve done polling on national issues in the past.”

However, Redmond was keen to clarify that a substantial effort is made to “…ensure that the questions were unbiased and were balanced. [We don’t] weight the questions in favour or against an answer that we might like.”

The results of the survey come after the heads of the State’s main universities, including UCD President Hugh Brady, acknowledged at a Joint Oireachtas Committee meeting last month that the student registration charge is a veiled form of third-level fees. Fine Gael Education Spokesman, Brian Hayes TD, has accused Minister O’Keeffe for introducing fees in the form of the annual increase to the student services levy, which last year stood at €1,500.

Speaking to The University Observer, Senator O’Toole expressed his confidence that the NUI would remain in existence in some form, citing the current constitutional situation, and predicted that the government would choose to retain the NUI in a token umbrella role rather than legislate for Seanad reform. Senator O’Toole also said that “recognition must be given to the extraordinary contribution the NUI has made to Irish economic growth over the past hundred years.”

Senator O’Toole was joined in his censure by Senator David Norris, a current Trinity College senator, who agreed that the abolition was an anticonstructive move, describing the proposal as “ludicrous” and expressing doubt that the move would result in any government savings.

Minister for Education and Science, Batt O’Keeffe stated that he intends to tackle the issue of Seanad reform in its entirety, and would work with the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, John Gormley TD.

The proposal to dissolve the NUI has met with mixed reactions among member universities and the NUI’s senators. Minister O’Keeffe has cited the establishment of an amalgamated qualifications and quality assurance agency for higher education as the basis for his decision, announced two weeks ago. The Minister also stated that he felt the NUI is currently unsustainable. The NUI is comprised of four constitutent universities: UCD, University College Cork, NUI Galway, and NUI Maynooth.

Abolishing the NUI had been recommended by An Bord Snip Nua, chaired by UCD economist Dr Colm McCarthy, which estimated that the move could save the Irish government in the region of €3m per annum. O’Keeffe has stated, however, that the decision had been made for the sake of re-organising and streamlining a quality assurance agency for higher education, and conceded that no financial gain would be made from this move.

NUI Chancellor Dr Maurice Manning expressed his bitter disappointment at the proposed abolition, explaining that the dissolution of the NUI would impact negatively on higher education in Ireland.

UCD President Dr Hugh Brady said that “the constituent universities will be seeking clarification on the form of legislation that the Minister has in mind”, but said that UCD and the other constitutent universities were confident that “it will be possible to work with Government to come up with a solution that protects the integrity and international reputation of the NUI degree.”

The proposed abolition has led to renewed calls for reform of the membership of Seanad Éireann, to which graduates from NUI and Trinity College elect three members each. Though a Constitutional referendum in 1979 permits the government to enact legislation allowing graduates of other institutions to elect members to the Seanad, no such act has been passed. It is understood that a full abolition of the NUI would require the government to introduce legislation in this regard, paving the way for graduates of other universities such as DCU to elect senators.

The University Observer understands that the dispute is related to demands for payments relating to semesterisation. WIT only became semesterised at the beginning of the current academic year, meaning lecturers were expected to set and mark two sets of exams. However discord has arisen as most lecturers had been employed under terms relating to only one set of end of year exams. It is believed that lecturers had expected to receive additional payment in respect for the extra marking they were required to do. The lecturers have thus threatened to pursue industrial action against the institute through the local sector of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI).

At the time of going to press, it was unclear what action the Students’ Union at WIT had decided to take against the possible delays in the release of examination results. A meeting of SU Council took place last night at which students were to decide what line of action was most appropriate to take.

Exam results were scheduled to be released today, 2^nd February, but The University Observer understands that students may walk out of lectures in protest if delays occur in their results being released. However, at the time of going to press, WITSU President Cathy Pembroke was quick to emphasise that a course of action has not yet been decided upon, and that “WIT Students’ Union has been in constant contact with both parties and is bringing updates to students as they happen.”

The introduction of semesterisation has caused various logistical problems in many of Ireland’s larger third-level institutes. In 2005, UCD’s registration system was bombarded with confused users who were unsure of the new system and its various logistical problems, while many students found themselves unable to enrol in core modules due to timetabling conflicts. Trinity College Dublin has also experienced some difficulties having become semesterised this year.

UCC Students’ Union Deputy President, Ian Power, told The University Observer that “significant damage” had been incurred to the student accommodation complexes, which were expected to be uninhabitable for at least two to four weeks due to problems with electrical supply damage and water damage.

Power also revealed that there has been “serious flood damage” to fourteen of the teaching and research facilities including a brand new €100m information technology building, and an extension to the Tyndall photonics, electronics and networking research institute. “Our sports arena, swimming pool and indoor sports hall were all under five feet of water,” he continued, saying that the repair bill for damage in UCC was expected to run into millions of euro.

Students living in the Castlewhite apartments had to be evacuated, with Power estimating that up to 2,000 students were affected by the floods. In an attempt to temporarily house the students, UCC Students’ Union has urged local hotels, hostels and guesthouse owners to accommodate the students until the floodwaters subside, as at least 300 students are presumed effectively homeless.

Normal operation of the university is not expected to resume until Monday 30^th November at the earliest, with all assessment deadlines this week having been pushed back seven days. UCC have extended the current term by one week to account for the disruption to teaching as a result of the flooding.

Power reported that the college had lost about a quarter of its lecture theatre capacity, but added that the UCC management were confident of being able to restore the regular timetable within a week.

The UCC campus is situated before the split in the River Lee, therefore rising water levels have consequences on either side of the campus. The river eventually broke through the quay wall at Grenville Place, causing the ground floor of the Mercy University Hospital to flood. Patients and staff were also evacuated following this water breach.

Locals have blamed the ESB for the surging water levels in the Lee. They say the company released a massive volume of water into the river at the Iniscarra dam approximately eight miles from the city in an attempt to prevent contamination of the city’s water supplies. This discharge gave the river enough power to burst its banks further downstream.