Straight Talkin' Man

From the small town of Kilmore, 24-year-old Roscommon native Joe O’Connor is the recently elected President of the Union of Students in Ireland (USI). Having studied at Galway Mayo Institute of Technology for a number of years, he has an honours degree in Accounting and a Masters in Strategy and Innovation Management. O’Connor served as the President of GMIT Students’ Union for two years and was previously the Vice President for Welfare. His favourite band is The National.

HOT PRESS: What first attracted you to student politics?
JOE O’CONNOR: I always had an interest in current affairs and in politics on a national level. I was never involved in a youth political party or anything like that. It was really that I had a few friends who were involved in the Students’ Union when I was finishing up my degree, and I was encouraged by a number of them to run. So it was when I became a fulltime officer in the SU that I got heavily involved – around the time when the recession hit the country and there was an increase in registration fees. It was also around the time of the spiral of cuts to grants and student supports.

Are you a member of any political party?
No, I’m not. Principles-wise, I genuinely don’t believe there is a place for mixing involvement in Student Union organisations and involvement in political parties. I think there is a certain conflict of interest there. In terms of my own political beliefs, I would be broadly social democratic. Initially, I would have allied my own beliefs and views with those of the Labour Party but, as time has gone on, and certainly in terms of the current government, I think a lot of people are disappointed with their performance on a range of different things.

How do you rate Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn?
Well, I suppose if you ask me that question again, in another 12 months, the answer might be different. But certainly he’s someone who I think is committed to reform and probably by and large has good intentions. However, in terms of the student movement, I think a lot of the promises that were made as part of the election, the broken pledges and so on – there’s a certain degree of bitterness out there. However, I don’t think it’s my job to rehash old battles and old arguments. My commitment is to the budget that is going on in October and the key student issues that we will be fighting for in that budget.

Have you met Ruairi Quinn yet?
I met with Minister Quinn a few weeks back, after taking up the post. I am only six weeks into the job here and, for four of those six weeks, the Dáil hasn’t been sitting. The initial meeting was very introductory. I would have set out my priorities for the year. It was reasonably constructive and I hope to meet with him again prior to the budget.

You had a maintenance grant throughout your college years. Did you have a job as well? 
 I suppose I was very lucky that I had a certain amount of support from my parents, alongside the support from the maintenance grant. I would have worked most summers and saved over the course of the summer. Like with most students, the concern with taking on part-time work is twofold: first of all, with the saturated market out there, it’s quite difficult to get a job and the jobs that are out there require pretty lengthy commitments, including weekend work and late night work in many cases. When you’re taking on college courses that require a fair bit of commitment, I think there is a massive problem.
Doing part-time work wasn’t a problem in the past for a lot of students.
Young people are being incentivised to take on courses in the stem area – science, technology, engineering and maths – and these are the types of courses that are very intensive hours-wise and require a huge amount of commitment. I was lucky enough to survive and get by. What really motivates me, and what gets me up out of bed in the morning in terms of the campaign we are running at the moment, is that I know that I’d have never had the chance to study at postgraduate level if the current situation was going on. I want the people that I represent now, and future generations to come, to have the same opportunities that I was lucky enough to have.

Mental health was one of the issues that you campaigned on… 
Issues of youth mental health are a massive concern in this country. Particularly in colleges, issues like personal finances for students have increased the levels of worries because students who previously would have had to just worry about their course and their academic concerns are now having to worry about getting by on very tight budgets. The average level of the maintenance grant is €84 a week and that is less than the lowest rate of job seekers. We do have a lot of students who maybe have very little parental support, who can’t find a part-time job, and that is the level they are surviving at. The demand on counseling services in many colleges is also a massive problem: funding is being cut and demand is increasing.

What are you proposing to do about it?
USI are working on a nationwide campaign called More Talk, More Action that we are hoping to roll out over the course of this year. It is really calling on students to talk about their mental health more, to start the conversation more, to reduce stigma and also to take action – to seek help and to avail of the services that are available.

Where do you stand on the issue of gay marriage?
We 100% fully support full marriage equality for all citizens in this country and actively supported the March for Marriage that took place recently with a huge USI contingent. To add to that, USI have a unanimously passed policy: we are unequivocal in our support for full marriage for same-sex LGBT couples and for entire marriage equality in this country. We don’t believe that marriage is something to do with religion or anything other than love. We will be very actively campaigning for the referendum on this issue to be held as soon as possible.

Where do you stand on the abortion issue?
USI is a pro-choice organisation. We thought it was a disgraceful situation that it took so long to legislate for the X Case, and we have massive concerns about the legislation that has now been passed in the Protection of Life Bill, whereby we feel it will place more restrictions on young women. I think we have had a situation in this country for many years now where we have had an outsourcing of the problem to the UK. For people who think abortion should not happen, the decision to allow women to travel abroad for this really should have been the thing they were campaigning about. It is not that Irish women don’t get abortions, it’s that we have essentially said that as long as it doesn’t happen on our shores, and you can afford to pay for it, then it’s okay. It’s becoming a class issue. When you’re in a situation when a young woman feels that she needs an abortion and she has to travel abroad, there are people for whom that’s not a financial difficulty – but for others it is. And that’s a massive issue. The USI is fully supportive of the pro-choice agenda in that respect.

Where do you stand on the issue of drug legalisation?
It is far less clear where USI stands on this. It came up as a motion in our most recent congress that we should look at the decriminalisation of drugs as an issue we should campaign on. It was passed by the majority, but for a USI motion to come into effect it needs to have 66% support on a national issue – and therefore it fell. It is an issue that there needs to be a lot more conversation around. My personal view would be that if you were to rip up the law books tomorrow and start from scratch, alcohol would be much more likely to be an illegal and dangerous drug to society than cannabis. We feel that the overall social effects of alcohol are much more concerning. Again, it is something that we will be looking at very closely.

Have you ever experimented with any drugs yourself?
It would not be something I would have any interest in now, but like an awful lot of people I tried it in college. I think even a lot of our senior politicians in the last number of years have come out saying that they have done the same. Drugs are like the previous two things you brought up: abortion and same sex marriage. The two of them were very taboo topics in this country for a long while and people didn’t feel comfortable discussing them. I can’t give a clear answer as to whether that would be a good approach for this country to take and this society to take. There is no USI position on it, but it is an area we need to talk about more.

Do you have policies around transgenders?
Again the USI is strong in its belief that all members of the LGBT community – that includes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender – should be fully integrated into society and have equal rights in that respect. We have been campaigning for transgender rights in this organisation for a number of years and certainly we will be continuing that this year.

I’ve heard the complaint that USI is a fairly toothless organisation. What’s your reaction to that?
As someone who has been involved at a local student union level, I absolutely disagree. I would have been the harshest critic of USI on certain issues over the last number of years, but it is one of those organisations that what you get out of it is what you put in. The support that is offered to local student unions around the country is invaluable and the importance of national representation now more than ever is absolutely prevalent.

Are there results that you can point to and say: we showed our teeth effectively there?
The difficult political and economic situation we are now in makes it very hard for any organisation that engages in the type of lobbying USI does on behalf of its members to be perceived as getting results. I don’t think you will find too many groups who are perceived as getting extremely positive results because of the situation the country is in. I would be happy to have an argument any day on what the clear values of the USI are, and the vast majority of student unions across the country would feel the same way.

On a personal level, where do you see yourself in 10 years’ time?
That’s a good question. I have a degree in business management. I still have an interest in that area. The skills I pick up leading our team here at USI as a student movement for the next 12 months will certainly stand to me if I want to go down that route. I also have an interest in public affairs. Whether I’ll go down that route or not, I just don’t know yet. I really don’t have a road map and I don’t have a plan ‑ that is the genuine honest truth.

And in the shorter term?
Getting to this position is something I am immensely proud of, and I am totally committed to giving this role my absolute all for the next 12 months. This year will be a cornerstone of my own life and something I really want to be able to look back on and to stand over and say: it was a successful year for the USI. I made a difference.