Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick East, Labour)

The Minister's answer was interesting but did not address my question. I asked about students who received grants for the year 2001-02. Is it a failure of the Minister's Department that the most recent statistics on grants and socio-economic breakdown are for the year 2000-01? These figures have been out since 2004 but there are three subsequent academic years for which we do not have figures. When does the Minister expect the information on 2001-02 to become available?

Does the Minister feel there is a need to overhaul the system? This is the intention of the student support Bill, which I am to understand will not be introduced for some time. Figures show that twice as many students from farming, professional, managerial and self-employed backgrounds received grants than students from lower socio-economic groups in 2000-01. We were promised a centralisation of this system. I propose that we have not received this because there is a dispute between the Minister's Department and the Department of Social and Family Affairs in terms of assessing students' families for these grants. When can we have more up to date information on who gets grants from the Minister's Department?

See this speech in context