[…]lack of reintroducing postgraduate grants is disappointing. “Although the increase of €3 million for the SAF is a positive,” Kevin Donoghue, USI president, said “Not reintroducing the postgraduate grants is disappointing. Fine Gael hasn’t taken the opportunity to fully invest in young people. Education is an investment, not expenditure. Young people and their families have suffered enormously because of the cost of college and not having an education will have a ripple effect on their futures – from training, refining current skills and employability, education is a major factor in the structure of economic recovery.” The budget has allocated €3m towards the SAF. This is split into […]
[…]the TUI to take action.” Members of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland – which represents 4,000 lecturers and researchers – are due to stage a one-day strike on Wednesday, February 3rd, as part of a campaign to highlight underfunding of the sector. Last December, the union’s third-level members voted in a national ballot by a margin of 92 per cent in favour of a campaign of industrial action up to and including strike action. Annette Dolan, the TUI’s deputy general secretary, said the sector had been battered by an era of anti-educational cutbacks. Funding has been cut by 35 per […]
[…]funding as a positive step towards implementation of the national mental health policy, A Vision for Change. Disappointingly, less than one week later we learned that under half of this money, €15M, would be released to the HSE to spend in 2017. The allocation of €15m for 2017 will represent only a 1.8% investment in new developments for mental health compared to the 2016 budget. Even including the €9.7M announced for increased pay rates in mental health services, this represents an increase of just 3% in revenue funding for mental health, much less than the 7.4% increase in revenue spending […]
