By Vicki Weller
KILDARE Fine Gael TD Anthony Lawlor said yesterday that he had no intention of calling in the gardaí to remove the members of Maynooth Students’ Union who have been occupying his Naas office since Friday afternoon.
USI president Rob Munnelly, who was among the nine male students to occupy the office at Main Street, Naas, stated that they would remain until Deputy Lawlor either called the gardaí to force them out, or went into the Dáil and voted against the budget in relation to fee increases and cutbacks in grant support.
A spokesperson for Deputy Lawlor told th Kildare Nationalist yesterday: “Deputy Lawlor is a member of the Fine Gael party and the coalition government and he will be voting with the government on the budget.”
However, she added that neither would the TD move to call the gardaí in relation to forcing the students out.
“He doesn’t want any of them to wind up with a criminal record, or anyone to get hurt,” the spokesperson said.
She added that the arrival of the nine male students on Friday afternoon at .pm had been “intimidatingfor herself and her colleague but they had declined to leave their place of work before .pm. Since then, she said the students have remained in the office over the weekend “with heat, light and a kettle”while she and her colleague were now working from Deputy Lawler’s Dáil office and the phone number had been diverted. “The only people suffering are local constituents who may call to the office,” she said.
The occupation of Deputy Lawlor’s office is part of a national campaign by the Union of Students in Ireland to force the government parties to honour their pre-election pledges to students.
According to Rob Munnelly, last year saw maintenance grants being cut by as much as 60% “for students who need it most”. He added that for families who don’t qualify for the grant, registration fees went up by a third and now they looked set to go up again.
Hitting out at the government’s failure to honour its pre-election commitments, the student leader noted that the students’ union had to take the unprecedented step of handing out food vouchers this year. “It’s a disgrace and we simply can’t let it get worse next year,” he said.
Mr Munnelly noted that this was not just a student issue, but a family and a national recovery issue. “We have said to the government: ‘If you raise fees or cut the grant, you are not just keeping me out of college, you are keeping my friend, my brother and my sister out of college’”. He said many students had been forced to drop out in the past year because of financial difficulties.
Concluding that the government “is just not listening” Mr Munnelly said: “We have been left with no alternative. If you thought students were going to take this lying down, then think again.”