Updated, 09:35

THIRD-LEVEL STUDENTS from across Ireland will have opted to defer a vote on whether to abandon their national union’s stance opposing all forms of tuition fees and student contributions.

Around 300 delegates, representing most of the country’s third-level students’ unions, were due to vote at the Union of Students in Ireland’s national congress in Ballinsloe – but the matter has now been deferred to a special one-off congress later this year.

Delegates were to be asked being asked to vote in a ‘preferendum’, ranking by choice their preference for the future funding models for college education, which saw tuition fees abolished for the majority of undergraduates in the mid-1990s.

Students who qualify for the ‘free frees’ scheme are required to pay an annual registration fee, however, which has risen from IR£150 to €2,250 since its introduction.

When they do vote, at a date next month yet to be determined, a secret ballot on whether the national union should advocate:

• A ‘graduate tax’ on third-level graduates, who would be levied based on their earnings,
• 100 per cent exchequer funding,
• 100 per cent upfront tuition fees,
• A student loan scheme, similar to that currently in place in the UK,
• A student contribution/registration fee model, which is currently in place, or
• None of the above.

A number of larger students’ unions had held campuswide ballots to decide on their union’s stance; delegates from the students’ union in Trinity College, for example, have been mandated to support a student loan scheme.

The four-day congress opened yesterday with complaints by outgoing USI president Gary Redmond, whose successor will be elected today, that education minister Ruairí Quinn had pulled out of a commitment to attend the congress and address delegates.

USI is separately taking legal action against Quinn over changes made to the third-level grants regime last year, arguing that students who had already begun full-time tuition had a legitimate expectation that changes of such severity would not be introduced.

A ruling on that case is due to be issued by the High Court on May 10.

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