Attacking grants will shut students out By Claire O’Sullivan

ABOUT six months ago, a friend of mine rang me whooping with joy.

She had just been told that out of 200 applicants, she and one other person had been selected to complete a nine-month internship with a local planning authority.

For any planning graduate, securing an internship in a planning office in 2012 Ireland was something akin to a physics graduate having got a job with the Cern team researching the Higgs boson particle.