A RECENT WEEK in Trinity College Dublin saw the faculty of health and science office overflowing with medical students, anxiously scanning the boards for their exam results.
Perhaps more anxious than most was 24 year old Declan Byrne from Ringsend, Dublin. In addition to his exam results, Declan was waiting to take his foundation scholarship examination. If successful, he would be entitled to accommodation in the college and the payment of his fees for the rest of his course.
If unsuccessful, Declan will have to resign himself to paying his own fees for the next three years - as he has done, with his parents help, since he began third level education seven years ago. Under the means testing system, and in spite of his inner city background, Declan Byrne did not qualify for a grant for his primary degree.
Ironically, this was because his family has worked so hard to keep him at college. His mother went to work at a cleaning job; his father works in the ESB and does overtime shifts. His brother and sister also work and contribute to the family income. At the end of the day everything Declan needs for college - fees, books, pocket money - is contributed by his family.
And in spite of the abolition of college fees now, Declan still has to pay fees because of a decision by the Department of Education. "Essentially, it's because I completed a primary degree already - nutrition over four years as a stand alone. The Department doesn't have a specific policy. I have written to the Minister, on numerous occasions and only got a noncommittal response. I have asked for a copy of the policy - the situation should at least be enshrined in policy," he says.
"They don't want to be seen to recruit people who have primary degrees back into the undergraduate system. But two other people on my course who have primary degrees are having their fees paid for them. One took her economics degree in Britain and didn't cost the Exchequer anything. The second, who did pharmacy in Ireland, took her case through the Ombudsman. Her case was that she came back to A6 medicine because she understood her fees were being paid as a direct consequence of misinformation; she had documented the instance in which she was misinformed.
"I was told I wouldn't have a problem by the Higher Education Grants' section of the Department of Education, but I didn't log the call or the date - there wasn't any reason at the time to do so. Therefore, I hadn't documented my case," he explains. The result is that he has to pay fees of £2,800 a year.
Born in Ringsend and growing up in the community's flats' complex, Declan attended the local St Patrick's Boys' National School, where he is remembered by students and teachers alike for being the first student ever to go on to do a degree in Trinity - the university that is virtually just up the road.
One of those teachers is Robin Booth, who has taught in the school for 22 years. "He was my biggest influence of that time," Declan says of Booth. "He understands the people of the area, his feet are on the ground. But most importantly he hasn't got a `black or white' attitude everyone is individual with him. He helps kids to believe in themselves."
Declan went on to Sandymount High School, where he was in the top five in his Inter Cert class.
Since childhood, Declan's ambition was to be a doctor. He is the only one of his family to have gone to college. It was that ambition and a passion for biochemistry that sent him to college. After the Leaving Cert, Declan spent the first four years at DIT Kevin Street, on the course in nutrition, gaining a degree jointly awarded by Trinity.
Of his years at Kevin Street, Decian has only good things to say. "I'm so glad that I went there first - it sort of broke me in gradually to college life," he says. "University is a whole different atmosphere. It can be very impersonal, but in Kevin Street I was on a first name basis with my lecturers. It gave me a great start.
One of them, Paul Mathias, Declan describes as his mentor. It was Mathias who gave Declan the chance to go to Rwanda, just a week after he qualified as a nutritionist. The day the exam results came out, he asked him to go to Zaire as Concern's field nutritionist for six weeks. Declan eagerly took up the challenge and spent Christmas in Rwanda, giving talks, attending, Concern meetings and studying a new form of relief food.
"It's an experience I'll never forget," Declan says. "And it is something I would like to go back to. I'd like to do that sort of medical care in the Third World. I feel that over there you can do so much to help so many, but in the west there's very little you can do to help very few.
To help him achieve that goal, Declan returned to study medicine. At present, he is the only Irish student in his class paying his own way through college without the help of a grant.
With the support of his hardworking parents, Declan has always worked to finance his way, sometimes at the detriment of his studies. "It will always be at tile back of my mind how much more I could have done if I had been able to give more of myself," he says.
Fewer than 5 per cent of inner city school leavers go on to third level education, compared to 60 per cent from more affluent areas. Declan feels there is discrimination against the working class. But though he fulminates against a system he says is unjust, he refuses to be swayed.
With struggle comes appreciation," he says. "Although it's been difficult, I wouldn't swap it now. I've always wanted to be a doctor, and that's what I will be."
