USI has threatened "drastic action" if the Budget does not contain measures which address student poverty and the accommodation crisis.
The threat come in the aftermath of the defeat of the Labour Party's private member's bill in the Dail last week. The bill called for an increase in student support and measures to tackle the shortage of accommodation affordable to students. Officers of the national students' union say they are particularly disappointed that Independent deputies Jackie Healy Rae, Tom Gildea and Mildred Fox voted against the bill. "Do they support students living in squalor and being offered a miserable 77p extra a week in their grant?" said USI campaigns officer, Ronan Emmet.
He said the union was "especially disappointed" with Wicklow TD Mildred Fox, whom they had lobbied intensely and who indicated earlier in the week that her support for the Government was not unconditional.
The final session of the debate turned into an acrimonious row between the leader of the Labour Party, Ruairi Quinn, and the Minister for Education, Micheal Martin. So personalised did the debate become that Quinn's speech referred to the Minister's youth in a disparaging manner on eight separate occasions and to the Minister's "ambition" six times - but only mentioned the student maintenance grant twice.
Earlier, the Minister had accused Quinn of signing up to USI's agenda "on the back of a truck on Molesworth Street" - a reference to Mr Quinn's speech to the USI protest march earlier this month. A succession of Fianna Fail speakers, led by the Minister, attacked Quinn and the former Minister for Education, Niamh Bhreathnach, for abolishing university fees.
Government deputies and Independent TDs passed an alternative motion noting the "significant expansion in funding for further and higher education" and recognising "the need for increased dedicated student accommodation". The motion also stipulated that "additional resources for student support should be targeted at increasing participation by the most disadvantaged groups".
The Minister described the Labour proposals, which are broadly in line with USI's, as "expensive, untargeted and ill thought-out". The Minister said he hoped to be in a position shortly to "announce some movement" on the provision of extra on-campus accommodation. He said colleges had been made aware of the Department's "willingness to assist further significant student housing developments" and that tax relief, rather than direct State aid, would be used to help in such building programmes. Martin also promised "a significant initiative" to tackle the problem of students dropping out of third-level courses and said he was "persuaded of the need to move towards a centralised grants authority with flexible methods of payment".
