Workers Solidarity Movement

The changes to third-level fees and the maintenance grants system for new postgraduate students in Budget 2012 come as no big shock. The €250 increase in the student contribution charge means students will pay €2,250 from next September, with other increases likely to come in 2013 and 2014. In relation to postgraduates, no maintenance grants will be paid for new entrants from the 2012/13 academic year. These changes come into effect after months of campaigning by the grassroots student campaign group Free Education for Everyone (FEE) and the Union of Students Ireland (USI).

Primary school communities in some of the poorer areas of the country have been left reeling as the extent of savage cuts to the numbers of teachers in DEIS primary schools begins to emerge.

Reading all that budget analysis you'd be forgiven for thinking that the unemployed were unaffected by the budget by and large; and you'd be wrong.  None of our news commentators in the mainstream media made much of the dramatic cut to the circumstances of the unemployed. A single person on the dole in rented accomodation is going to be €432 worse off this coming year.

The changes to fees and the maintenance grants system for new postgraduate students in Budget 2012 comes as no big shock. The €250 increase in the student contribution charge means students will pay €2,250 from next September, with other increases likely to come in 2013 and 2014. In relation to the future of the postgraduates, no maintenance grants will be paid for new entrants from the 2012/13 academic year.

These changes come into effect, after months of campaigning by the grassroots student campaign group Free Education for Everyone (FEE) and the Union of Students Ireland (USI).

Overheard pre budget conversation between two women shoppers in Aldi in Cork city.

Another budget looms. The Irish public again find themselves with their head under a guillotine looking up at this budget wondering about the weight behind the blade.  We are subjected to daily media leaks of what they are going to do to us in this:  Less dole, more job losses for those who have them, stopping medical cards for a few months, all the wild and fearful possibilities of a worse life for many people are being floated.    What is different this time when you compare it to the previous three or is it four austerity budgets?  We’ve been in crisis for some time now but this time the government is different.