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THIRD-LEVEL STUDENTS could be asked to pay up to €3,000 to register for college each year by 2015, the Minister for Education has hinted.
Ruairí Quinn told an audience of students in the University of Limerick that the registration fee paid by third-level students at the start of each year would be up by €250 next year and would likely keep increasing.
The Irish Independent’s Katherine Donnelly quotes him as saying the fee was “probably increasing up to €3,000″ in the coming years, essentially confirming that registration fees could continue to rise.
The increased fee – which was introduced in 1996 in lieu of full tuition fees, and originally stood at £150 – is paid by all undergraduate students, though students receiving maintenance grants have the charge paid by their local authority.
Quinn’s comments may indicate, however, that the government does not plan – for the moment at least – to remove the free undergraduate fees scheme which was introduced when Fine Gael and Labour were last in government.
Gary Redmond, president of the Union of Students in Ireland, said his union had been “incredibly concerned” that the fee – now formally classed a ‘student contribution’ – would continue to rise into the future.
“There was always the suspicion that the minister was going to increase it over the lifetime of his government, and pander to his backbenchers,” Redmond said.
Redmond said his understanding was that the fees would increase in €250 increments at least during the lifetime of the current Dáil, and that the moves were making third-level education a “less viable option” for most families.
“This increase won’t give colleges a single cent,” Redmond said, claiming that the 2012 Budget had simultaneously cut funding for third-level institutions while at the same time increasing the student contribution.
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God rest both of them. Respect the sea. Wear a life preserver at all times and carry a means to communicate on your person. Preferably not a smart phone, the touch screen is next to impossible to use when there is a film of water on it. A traditional brick phone with big buttons in a dry bag is the job.
Madness going out there again, this time with tragic results. RIP
@Niamh Leahy: God rest them and all but incredibly selfish and ignorant to put peoples lives in risk again by going out to the same spot. No respect for the water or the rescuer!!
This is the same spot where 2 trawlers went down in the mid 70′s and nobody quite knows how they managed to sink. Apparently a very dodgy part of the water with strong currents. The locals don’t seem to go there at all and don’t visit the nearby Rathlin O’Birne island either.
Time for some type of basic competency in seamanship and possibly a licence requirement for small craft ownership. Too many inexperienced people on the water. RIP to both
@SquideyeMagpie: Try get people from Eastern Europe to comply! They’d laugh at you. They just dont see danger where we would.
have your say