Campaign to save Carlow College continues
Carlow College Photo: michaelorourkephotography.ie
THE campaign to save Carlow College has gathered momentum over the last few days, with two well-attended public meetings and demonstrations held in Carlow town over the weekend, while an online petition calling for transparency for staff and students has gathered close to 1,000 signatures.
On Friday evening, over 150 people attended a meeting in the Seven Oaks Hotel in support of the 87 staff at the college who are now facing redundancy. Outside the front doors of the college on Sunday, around 300 people attended a demonstration, which heard music from the band Transmitter, whose frontman Stewart Quinn is a past pupil of the college.
It is almost a month since it was announced that the almost 250-year-old institution would cease operations over the next two years, with South East Technological University (SETU) taking ownership of all associated lands and buildings on the 17-acre campus.
The college has been in financial difficulty for some time now and it was hoped that a merger with SETU would secure its future, but no merger materialised.
The online petition is seeking answers on several fronts: why staff were let go on what many describe as unfavourable terms; why a humanities college in the south-east was allowed to close without any public consultation; and why the college’s apparent transition to a SETU-operated humanities campus was abandoned without explanation or transparency.
The petition also calls for public consultation on the future use of the grounds of Carlow College.
Last Tuesday (9 June), addressing minister for higher education James Lawless in the Seanad, Carlow/Kilkenny senator Patricia Stephenson raised several questions around the closure, particularly around the timeline of when it became known that a merger was not going to happen.
“There are serious questions about how this process has been managed – staff deserve to know when it became clear that a merger with SETU would not happen and what efforts were made to protect jobs and when was Carlow College advised it was not going to transfer to SETU,” she said.
In response, minister Lawless said the state would provide a “significant sum of money” to Carlow College to assist in the transfer of the campus to SETU and that he expected it would be made available when consideration is given to the 87 staff members facing into redundancies.
Meanwhile, Ireland’s largest trade union SIPTU has called on minister Lawless, the department, SETU and Carlow College management to publish the relevant arrangements and engage with staff representatives to provide a credible future for workers, while ensuring that all information requests relating to the process be dealt with promptly.
SIPTU organiser Yvonne McGrath said: “The workers who built and sustained Carlow College deserve more than public assurances. They deserve transparency, engagement and a real plan for the future.”
