Irish Left Archive: What’s Mined is Ours! The Case for the Retention and Development of Irish Minerals under Public Ownership, Union of Students in Ireland,

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Many thanks to the person who forwarded this to the Archive.

This document – an updated version of an earlier document, issued by the Union of Students in Ireland in 1973 – subtitled “The case for the retention and development of Irish Minerals under Public Ownership” provides evidence of the activist approach of the USI in the 1970s on a broad range of areas.

Indeed the Introduction notes that ‘the USI was amongst the first national organisations to raise the now controversial issue of the development and ownership of Irish mines. Successive National Congresses have called for public ownership and democratic control fo the mineral resources of Ireland. With other sections of the community this Union has been calling for equal educational opportunities and adequate educational facilities and has received answers from successive Ministers of Education to the effect that the country simply cannot afford ‘to cherish all the children fo the nation equally’. A fraction fo the profit from the Navan deposit alone would give the present government the financial means to effect a revolution in the education system throughout this country’.

Interestingly the President of USI at this point was Pat Rabbitte and the Deputy President Kieran Mulvey and the Foreword by them and Pat Brady, the Education Officer argues that the update was necessary due ‘to a demand from the general public…[demonstrating] the wise of many people to discover more of the facts about the true potential of Ireland’s mineral resources’. It notes that David Giles, Colm Regan and Alan Wallace ‘did the research for this bookle.