Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

I propose to take Questions Nos. 58, 66, 98 and 726 together.

As the Deputies will be aware, I announced in June 2006 that the vocational education committees, VECs, would be given sole responsibility for the administration of the third level student maintenance grants. Following my announcement, the Government gave approval for the drafting of a new student support Bill along the lines of the general scheme presented to them.

The proposed student support Bill will place all student grants on a statutory footing for the first time and will provide for the designation of grant awarding authorities and for the general basis on which grants will be awarded to eligible students.

My main priority in bringing forward this Bill is to provide a statutory framework for reforming the administration of student grants, and a coherent basis for a new single unified scheme of student maintenance grants.

The Bill is part of a programme of legislative and administrative reform, which will facilitate the introduction of service improvements in the administration of student grants, providing for greater consistency of application, improved client accessibility and timely delivery of grants to those who need them most. It will include guaranteed timeframes for the assessment of grants, an independent appeals procedure and more efficient arrangements for handling applications and making payments.

The existing arrangements for student grants encompass a mix of statutory and non-statutory administrative schemes involving a variety of different conditions and entitlements under each scheme. Therefore, in moving from the four existing schemes to a single statutory-based scheme, a range of complex issues emerged to be addressed. Officials in my Department have been working closely with the Attorney General's office to resolve all of these matters in order to ensure the new arrangements in the single scheme will be more coherent, accessible and understandable for students and their parents.

I want to reassure Deputies of my commitment to move forward with the programme of legislative and administrative reform of student grants. The student support Bill is at the final stages of preparation and my Department is currently working closely with the Office of the Attorney General to finalise the draft legislation. I hope to be in a position to have the Bill published shortly, if possible during the current Dáil session or, more likely, before the return of the Dáil in January.

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