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SPECIAL FEATURE | Creating Opportunity Out of Change


(Photo captioned: Cathal Reilly, Final year student and TCD Student Union President 2008-09)

Former Student Union President, Cathal Reilly outlines the challenges facing fi nal-year students and recent graduates as Ireland’s economy goes into freefall.)

Last year’s Student Union President, Cathal Reilly, is well versed on the challenges facing students in a new economic era.

As the economy slows down, recent graduates and final year students are faced with the unenviable task of trying to find work in a jobs market that has been steadily drying up. As for fi rst-year students, just getting the cash together on the fi rst step of the college journey is going to be trying enough.

Re-entering College to complete his fi nal year, Reilly is facing the same situation as many of his peers. “The obvious challenge is the nature of the jobs market,” he begins. “Graduate positions in companies have seen a dramatic fall in the last year or so. Graduating for students now seems like a completely different notion than it did a year or two ago, and is now a giant leap into the unknown, with little or no prospect of employment.”

This trend is keeping more people in universities for longer, on top of a 7.2 per cent increase in applications to the CAO this year, which includes many mature students. “Maybe this is a way of avoiding the transition from education into a bleak jobs market,” Reilly ponders.

But is it all negative, or are there advantages now that might have been less obvious during the boom? “Absolutely, there are defi nitely opportunities out there,” he says enthusiastically.

“The fact that this is happening creates an opportunity for entrepreneurship. In a similar situation to the ‘70s and ‘80s, we looked into ourselves to see what we can produce within Ireland, and within universities.” Reilly suggests that fi nding ways to make opportunities for oneself – rather than looking for opportunities from others or abroad – is the way forward.

However, we are very small nation, and we have unique problems. “Ireland, until recently, enjoyed signifi cant foreign investment,” he remarks. “Yet, the withdrawal of multinational corporations is certainly playing on the minds of students and graduates at the moment. We are on the periphery of Europe, and this has played to our advantage in the past. This advantage is still as relevent today as it was in the past.”

Reilly doesn’t want to draw comparisons between the Irish situation and that of our European neighbours. “I don’t see us as being better or worse than any other country,” he begins after a moment’s thought. “I think we’re in a very good position and we have a good basis from which to grow from. Our graduates are highly educated. We just need to position ourselves to be ready for the new realities and make sure the world knows we’re still here and we are still an attractive option for investment.”

But how is that kind of statement to the world going to be made clear? Reilly, unsurprisingly for someone who spent the past year in the Student’s Union, is a great believer in the power of education. Talking about encouraging start-ups from students, he pushed for more courses in University programmes which would focus on the development of home-grown businesses. “We need to get our students thinking along those lines; we need to get our current students, our graduates, and our fourth-level students developing businesses within College.”

Talk turns, inevitably, to a topic he has had to deal with consistently over the past year: where the money will come from. His responses are a mix of a fi rm belief in an open system and a new fi nancial realism.

We have to make sure that entry to third-level is organised in a way which doesn’t discourage or inhibit anyone from coming to college. We need to ensure a system is put in place whereby people are not looking to their families to fi nance their studies. There is going to be an element of fi nancial burden on everybody, but we have to make sure that third-level education is equally accessible to all.”


"Our graduates are highly educated. We just need to position ourselves to be ready for the new realities and make sure the world knows we’re still here"


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