Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his reply.

In the economic times in which we have found ourselves recently with the financial pressures that are on families, particularly those sending students to school and, most of all, third level, it is a travesty that the biggest cause of financial hardship and stress in the past academic year for those families has been the Minister's failure to properly implement the centralisation of grants. For months after the academic year started, students and families throughout the country were struggling to try to keep their children in college. There were families who were waiting on the special rate of maintenance grant of over €6,000 who are dependent entirely on social welfare who had to try to keep their child in accommodation and in maintenance in college while they waited, in many instances until early in the new year, to receive their grant.

Through the freedom of information request to which I referred in the question, my party has found out that during that period the Minister met the City of Dublin VEC, the body in charge of SUSI, on one occasion only. Today, the Minister stated that normal protocol is that he engages through his officials. He had no problem in coming up front when he established SUSI and enlightening us all on how it would be a key initiative within the Department. The Minister was taking political leadership of it then. However, there was no sign - the evidence now points this out and the Minister admitted it here today as well - of him taking that political leadership in the crisis when thousands of students were not getting their grants as a result of the failure of the Minister's project. It is most disappointing.

I would ask the Minister to at least ensure that he does not repeat those mistakes. Unfortunately, having listened to his earlier response on the capital assets test, the Minister is talking about a report on how grants will be assessed next year not coming before Cabinet until, perhaps, Easter. He also referred to legislation being required to implement that and to what will happen in terms of getting grants processed properly for next year. This is also unacceptable.

I would ask the Minister one question. Why, when there was such a crisis in the student grant submission system, did the Minister not take control personally and show the leadership required to get it addressed? It was not resolved, with many students waiting until the new year to be paid.

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