Third-level cuts threaten our future

THE term “paradigm” could have been coined to describe the increasingly obdurate defence by the Coalition of an economic orthodoxy that is collapsing in this country, as well as across the eurozone.

The tragedy is that while the coalition inherited this malign paradigm it has, itself, thrown up the ramparts around it. In its recent budgetary dispositions it is exacerbating the present and future consequences of this “mindset”. It is cutting the ground from underneath the economy and its capacity to recover, even over the medium-term.

The most recent CSO data confirm that domestic demand is mired in negative territory. We are also increasingly vulnerable to the threat that recession in the eurozone — the reason for the recent ECB rate cut — poses to our exports, which is all that is keeping the economy’s head above water. Even so, the coalition is clinging to a budgetary adjustment process that was initially based upon obsolete economic forecasts, and a wholly different eurozone environment. The inability — or unwillingness — to see this is clearly reflected in proposals to axe post-graduate grants. The costs of access to third-level education have been increased. Students seeking to finance themselves are finding it almost impossible to find even part-time work. New cuts in post-graduate support undermine the need to renew the national knowledge-base — which is at the heart of competitiveness. There are other examples of counterproductive cuts, notably in health, but cuts to third-level education threaten our economic capabilities, particularly in relation to foreign direct investment. They erode social cohesion and they are a landmine, deep in the long grass, in terms of maintaining political stability. It is in the nature of paradigms that they are defended by the incumbents in the teeth of evidence demonstrating that a whole new mindset is imperative. That is, until they collapse. We have no Plan B. The Irish people, who were not consulted on the bailout but should have been, deserve better.