Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I still think the Minister is missing the reason they are protesting and why they are so angry. People who are on poverty stipends, who have no stipends, educational psychologists who have no funding and clinical psychologists who have a little funding are on such low incomes that they have been doubly hammered in real terms by the cost of living and the housing crisis. It is becoming unbearable for them. What they got in the budget was a drop in the ocean. It does not compensate for how much worse things have got for them over the last year and a half, particularly with the low incomes they have. I am telling the Minister that we have to get rid of the fees for postgraduate students. It makes no sense to put financial barriers in the way of people reaching their maximum potential in education. Why are we still putting up barriers, making it difficult and putting them in a situation from which many drop out or then decide to leave the country?

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