In a press release issued yesterday, rx it has been announced by the Free Education for Everyone Galway Group that students are set to march against the arranged increase of third-level fees to €3000 by 2015 and the abolition of the Postgraduate grant.
The march, set to proceed in Galway on Wednesday, 29 February at 1pm, will consist of participants marching from NUIG campus, past the cathedral and on to Eyre Square, where participants will be met by speakers. This march will coincide with a National Day of Action to be heldby students nationwide, and will focus also on cuts to primary and secondary education cutbacks.
William O’Brien, Equality Officer of NUIG Student’s Union, protested that ‘The government’s abolition of the student grant for all incoming postgraduate students is yet another sickening attack by this odious, IMF dominated government on the living standards of young people.’ He encouraged that now was the time for students to take a stand in relation to their rights and to make their voices heard ‘against this insane austerity agenda that is directly attacking students and crippling our country’.
Sarah McCarthy, second year Arts student commented how ‘this gombeen government and their IMF puppet masters’ have ‘sold the young people of Ireland down the drain. Now is the time for students to rise up and smash this hated Fine Gael/Labour government into the ground.’
Free Education for Everyone (FEE) is a nationwide campaign group committed to fighting cutbacks at all levels of the education system, as part of a wider campaign against austerity. Recent demonstrations from the Galway branch include the occupation of Deputy Brian Walsh’s office last November, which saw nine activists arrested, and a blockade of Fine Gael’s pre-budget think-in at the city’s Radisson Hotel last September.
Lisa Gorry
