USI

The Union of Students in Ireland is your national representative body and theres been plenty going on in USI this year. After a tough year last year USI is doing its best to come back in full force with a number of anti-fees protests throughout the country and lending support to DITs new campus in Grangegorman and our bid for university status.

31st August 2010: USI tells Minister Batt O'Keefe to 'get real' about graduate unemployment.

The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) is calling on the lackluster Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Innovation, Batt O’Keeffe, to “get real” about graduate unemployment before it is too late.

Minister O’ Keeffe announced a new initiative this morning - Graduates 4 International Growth (G4IG) - which will create 50 placements for unemployed graduates.

However, at the current rate of graduate emigration, this will negate just two and a half days of graduates emigrating from Ireland, leaving the remaining 100,000 with little hope of Government intervention as they move abroad over the coming five years in search of jobs.

This half-baked response from the Government to graduate emigration and unemployment comes despite calls from USI for Minister O’ Keeffe to create a graduate internship programme.

The cost of this proposed programme would be minimal to both the Government and employers. The Government would already be paying social welfare benefits for these unemployed graduates but would now benefit from the increase in GDP brought about by an influx of new graduates into the labour market.

Employers would benefit from gaining fresh knowledge and greater output from graduate interns without having to bare the financial burden of remuneration. Graduates would also benefit from the experience: they
would maintain their skills and reconnect to the labour market.

This programme would free thousands of Irish graduates from the grip of long term unemployment. It would also ensure graduates would attain places in both the public and private sectors, whilst retaining their social welfare benefits.

Dublin Institute of Technology Students’ Union President, Ciarán Nevin, said:

“The time has come for the Government to get real about combating graduate
unemployment. Creating fifty placements is admirable, but it appears the Minister fails to
realise the extent of the problem facing this country.

The creation of 50 placements solves just .0005% of the graduate unemployment
problem and with almost 100,000 graduates now out of work, the minister cannot afford
to ignore the need for large scale measures such as a national internship programme.”

Gary Redmond

Gary is the USI President for the coming academic year.
Gary has submitted an open letter to all of USIs members
outlining their plans for the coming year.

You can read this letter here.