’We want to vote’

‘We want to vote’

Áine Ryan

POLITICIANS expect students to become involved with politics and then do not listen to their views, the Western Area Officer of the Union of Students of Ireland (USI), Mr Kieran O’Malley, has claimed.
He told The Mayo News that he strongly supported last week’s call by USI President, Mr Colm Hamrogue, to hold the General Election on a Friday to facilitate the 70,000 students who will otherwise be disenfranchised. About 54 per cent of the 140,000 third-level student population do not live at home.
“Students would vote it they were given the chance in a lot of rural constituencies. They are really interested in the issues. In Mayo many students are at college in Galway, Sligo or Dublin, and they won’t get home until Friday evening,” said Bonniconlon native, Kieran, who is a strong proponent of the delivery of the Western Rail Corridor. 
He said that during a recent tour of colleges he was involved in getting 3,000 students signed-up to the Electoral Register. When asked by The Mayo News what, in his opinion, were the top three issues that concerned students, Mr O’Malley cited grants, infrastructure and accommodation.
“Students need to receive their grants earlier in term, in September, when they need the money and have a lot of initial costs. The establishment of a centralised grants system would greatly help administration,” he said.
“Lack of infrastructure is a huge problem. I’d love to be able to live and work in Mayo, but we need better broadband, the National Spatial Strategy needs to be implemented, NDP [National Development Plan] monies need to be spent here and the fostering of a culture of entrepreneurship,” Mr O’Malley continued.
“Accommodation is still a big problem too with many landlords exploiting students with rents and quality of housing and when the Section 50 ends, in two years’ time, it will get worse,” he added.
The Section 50 was an amendment to the Finance Act 1999 and afforded tax relief, for a decade, to landlords who rented accommodation to students. 
At the opening of the USI annual congress in Bundoran last week, Mr Hamrogue asked Minister Mary Couglan to convey the union’s opinion on the preferred Friday voting day directly to Taosieach, Bertie Ahern.
Mr Ahern had recently announced his strong opposition to holding the election on a Friday, saying he had ‘listened to the argument the last time, and it didn’t work’. He had suggested that people now want to get out of the city on Friday afternoons and he added that a lot of students would have left the city by the time the election was held.
Sixty per cent of secondary school pupils go on to third level education nowadays, as opposed to around seven per cent in the 1960s.
A Mayo News website poll two weeks ago, asking respondents on which day of the week the election should be held, revealed that over 50 per cent believed it should be held on a Saturday while 35 per cent opted for Friday and eleven per cent for Thursday.