O’Keeffe accused of hypocrisy as grants freezed

EDUCATION Minister Batt O’Keeffe has been accused of hypocrisy as he freezed student grants a week after promising greater efforts to get poorer people into college.

Launching the Higher Education Authority’s third-level access strategy last week, he gave a commitment to improved equity of access to higher education.

But with no increase in maintenance grants for about 56,000 students starting college in the autumn, as revealed by yesterday’s Irish Examiner, Mr O’Keeffe faces charges of putting more disadvantaged students at risk of being unable to attend.