Opinion: Horse has bolted on opposition to Carlow College closure

CALL me a cynic, but while public meetings, online petitions and questions raised in the Seanad are all well and good, when it comes to the future of Carlow College, I believe that horse has bolted.

Let me be up front: I didn’t attend the demonstration outside the college or the public meeting in the Seven Oaks Hotel; it is not something I do. I have attended too many meetings over the years where a lot of well-intentioned people express their views, but it all comes to nothing.

I also have a short fuse and sometimes the excuses being delivered by those in so-called positions of authority just grate on my nerves and my inside voice is quick to go public.

That said, I genuinely applaud those who have started a campaign to try to save Carlow College and the 87 jobs that will go when that famous institution closes its doors in two years’ time. Like many ‘small’ centres of education, Carlow College, or St Pat’s as I prefer to call it, demonstrated time and time again that it was not a soulless establishment.

If you need confirmation of that fact, all you have to do is read what some of those in attendance at the public meeting in the Seven Oaks Hotel last week had to say.

I’m not saying there isn’t that hands-on attitude at SETU – I don’t know. Once upon a time, when it was still an RTC, I do know there was that ‘family feel’ about the place. While never a student there, my late mother once worked in the stationary shop located at the bottom of the canteen and on my many visits to her when she was supposedly working, it was obvious for all to see that there was no ‘them and us’. In other words, students and staff freely mingled with each other.

I attended third level in Dublin and, let me tell you, there definitely was a ‘them and us’ scenario in the canteen – not that I paid much attention to protocol, even back then.

What I found interesting about all the statements coming forth following the announcement that St Pat’s is to close are suggestions of public engagement about its future. If that was truly the case, why did its closure come as such a shock to staff, students and the people of Carlow.

According to senator Patricia Stephenson, who raised the matter in the Seanad, the 87 staff members were ‘shocked’ by the announcement of the phased closure of the college. In addition, redundancy talks are set to begin as early as August – which doesn’t leave much time for so-called public consultation, does it?

The senator also pointed out that staff were of the opinion that there would at least be an option to transition or redeploy to SETU, but were told that redundancy was the only path available. So much for consultation.

I accept that no organisation can continue to run at a loss without consequences and, by all accounts, St Pat’s has been bleeding money for years. However, to simply hand over 17 acres of prime real estate in the centre of Carlow for €2.5 million ‘in additional supports’ from the Department of Education since 2022, and whatever else it may contribute before the college finally closes its doors for good, doesn’t appear to be a good deal.

According to minister for higher education James Lawless, he has met representatives from both Carlow College and SETU ‘on multiple occasions’ and had convened a dedicated working group with an independent state-appointed mediator to develop the agreed road map. This, he said, had been ‘freely agreed to’ and endorsed by the governing bodies of both institutions.

I have no reason to doubt the minister, and I have no doubt there is paperwork somewhere to back up this statement. But did anyone think to talk to the other stakeholders – a phrase I hate – which, in this case, means both the staff working there and the students who have enrolled on various courses (not all of which will be completed by the time the college closes).

We all know the answer to that, because if they had, there would be no need for public meetings or demonstrations.

Getting a few bob as a redundancy payment is not to be sneezed at and will keep the wolf from the door for a time while people figure out what they want to do with their lives. Some might be happy to retire and take life at a more leisurely pace, but others believe they still have something to contribute to society and would have like to have been consulted before their future was decided for them by people who had not invested the greater part of their working lives in Carlow College.

We read last week about the creation of 1,500 temporary jobs during the construction of a proposed green energy storage facility near Rathoe, which will lead to 70 highly-skilled jobs on a permanent basis. All to be applauded, yet here we are talking about the loss of 87 jobs.

A net loss on multiple fronts.