page_title: Free Education for Everyone
section_title: University blockades
hierarchical_section_title: Free Education for Everyone / University blockades
caption_attribution_description: English: Quadrangle, National University of Ireland, Galway. Photo: Joe Desbonnet, April 2000.
context_page_description: Free Education for Everyone was an Irish student campaign group which was set up in September 2008 in University College Dublin to fight the proposed re-introduction of university fees. FEE was active in Ireland's main universities, including University of Limerick, University College Dublin, Trinity College, Dublin, NUI Maynooth, University College Cork and NUI Galway, and Queen's University Belfast.
  Activists organised mass protests. It was mainly known for its occupations of government constituency offices and blockades against government ministers and of government buildings. Politicians such as the former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, and Ministers Batt O'Keeffe, Éamon Ó Cuív, Brian Lenihan and his brother Conor Lenihan were targeted.
context_section_description: A number of government ministers encountered hostility from students whilst visiting campuses at UCD and NUIG. Three members of FEE, including the Chair of Sinn Féin's UCD branch were arrested for breaches of the peace following two minor scuffles as 100 students took part in a banner-bearing protest at the Clinton Auditorium on the Belfield campus of UCD on 20 October 2008. The three were later released without charge. Brian Lenihan was to chair a function at the Institute but met with a blockade as students responded to the proposed barrier to their education by creating a physical barrier of their own against the Minister. On the evening of 12 November 2008, FEE activists attempted to blockade Minister of State, Conor Lenihan (a brother of Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan) from his visit to University College Dublin, in protest at the proposed re-introduction of university fees.
  On 9 December 2008, Eamon O'Cuiv was accused of "manhandling" a student activist at NUI Galway after claiming that his secretary was being "squashed up against the wall with students kicking her and one of them waving a big stick at her". The student has said he was on the opposing side of a railing and photographic evidence has proven this to be the case, with one photo clearly showing the Minister grappling the student.
  A visit by Bertie Ahern to NUI Galway on 2 February 2009 was disrupted by FEE activists, forcing the former Taoiseach to cancel a scheduled lecture on the campus. There were scuffles with gardaí as Ahern was blocked from entering the college grounds and booed by a group of FEE activists and other NUIG students. One man was arrested but later released.
caption: The Quadrangle at NUI Galway where a number of blockades have taken place against members of the ruling Fianna Fáil party.
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