Students defend themselves from fees

national | miscellaneous | news report Tuesday October 08, 2002 21:21 by Fiachra O'Luain - ULSU (Personal capacity) Castletroy, Limerick

Thousands expected on streets of Limerick

Thousands of Students to take Limerick by Storm. To reject any threat to Ireland's Freedom of Education.

Over 3000 students from all of the four colleges in Limerick will march into the city centre for a rally at 3pm at Arthurs' Quay on Wednesday the 9th of October.
Students from UL, LIT, LSAD and the Mary Immaculate Third Level Institutes are set to take Limerick by storm tomorrow.
There has been wide spread uproar at the 69% increase in registration fees which now disqualify any student unable to pay the fee of nearly €1000 at the beginning of the year.
That uproar has been ignited into large scale student anger that the Irish Right to Free Education is now being assulted by Noel Dempsey, Minister for Education who has proposed a reintroduction of fees starting at €4000 per student per year in time for September 2003.
Many students are adamant that this move would align our education system with a process of privatisation as proposed in the GATS
which is a series of proposals drawn up by the WTO which aims to open up almost all aspects of life to ownership by corporations ignoring the wishes of the local population. This will be much more difficult to fight if the Nice Treaty is forced through.