Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on this Bill. One wonders how the current structures existed for so long. We have four schemes, the higher education grants, third level maintenance grants, VEC scholarship scheme and PLC maintenance grant scheme. There are 66 awarding authorities. If one set out to create a more complex and bureaucratic scheme, one could not do much worse. This chaotic, complex scheme is a maze for any student and parent to get through. The delays and disparities between the various awarding authorities and the complexity of the various schemes arise year after year. Every autumn there is a chaotic situation whereby students await their grants which the various authorities provide at different times. Students have no money when their courses begin and may wait for months before they receive their money. That is no way to conduct business.

I commend the Minister, Deputy Hanafin, for introducing this Bill to improve the chaotic situation to some degree. The Minister was right to provide a single, unified grant scheme to replace the four existing grant schemes. Putting one, simplified scheme in place is the way to go. I cannot say the same about the other side of the coin. The Minister had reduced the 66 awarding authorities to 33. A 50% reduction is to be welcomed, but 33 awarding authorities is still mind-boggling. I say that as somebody who has served on a VEC. I was chairman of the City of Dublin VEC for seven years and served on the local authority and I know the system that operates in all cases and the fantastic work done by the VECs. They constitute the most progressive section of the education system in this country. They do fantastic work and have responded brilliantly to the changing needs of society. They have been the finest in that respect.

Nevertheless, many VEC committees are very small. There are town and county committees. Some run only one or two schools. It is a top-heavy approach to have them provide a separate secretarial, operational and administrative service for the awarding of tuition and maintenance grants. I do not see why it is necessary. I do not understand the purpose. It remains a decentralisation of the process, but the ideal would be to have a single, unified awarding system in line with the single, unified grant system.

Could the Minister examine putting it on a regional basis? For example Sligo could award grants in the north west, Galway in the south west, Limerick in half of Munster, Cork in the other half and the City of Dublin VEC in Dublin. The Minister could reduce it to six without too much trouble. We know there will be in-fighting and it is impossible to keep everybody happy all the time. If one was starting from scratch, one would never have 33 awarding bodies, never mind 66. Could the Minister address that in her response? Could the system be reviewed after a couple of years to see how the legislation works and whether it would be appropriate to restrict the number of awarding authorities? When the IVA comes together and discusses this legislation it might examine this aspect. The VECs can still carry out all their good educational work including teaching and services to the community, but this is an administrative, bureaucratic type of work they need not necessarily do because it is not directly teaching, tuition or education.

My second point is on something I welcome, but which the Minister has hidden away under the heading "Miscellaneous" at the very end of the Bill.

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