Irish Students Protest Against Loan Tax Schemes

Fri, 14 Aug 2009

Students in Dublin gathered this week to protest against plans to introduce a graduate tax or deferred loan scheme.

Set up by the Union of Students in Ireland (USI), some 30 students took part in the demonstration outside Dublin’s Trinity College on Wednesday to voice their concerns at government proposals to introduce a student loan system for funding the third-level sector.

USI said that if such a system is implemented, students heading to university this September could be liable to pay, although the scheme would not be introduced until September 2010.

Union president Peter Mannion said "it seems grossly unfair that the students who get their Leaving Cert results today will be signing up to a system that they don’t know the full and true cost of".

Gary Redmond, student union president of University College Dublin, said "it’s not right that when these students filled out the CAO application they thought the State would pay for their education . Now they could be saddled with all this debt ."

According to the USI, the €30,000 cost of a four-year arts degree would increase by €10,000 per year if the current scheme was abolished, leaving students crippled by debt upon graduation .
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