Mary O'Rourke (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)

I commend the thrust of this eminently appropriate Bill. I expect the Minister conceived the legislation and issued an instruction that it should be formulated and introduced. There was considerable confusion among the student population and, specifically, their parents about securing grants to enable students to attend college, whether in the IT or university sector. The decision to consolidate and rationalise the processing of grants by having one application address and a single method of dealing with applications is to be commended. It is a common sense approach to third level funding. I like to think it had its genesis in the frustration of people who came to the Minister and asked whether they should apply to Dún Laoghaire VEC, South Dublin County Council or otherwise for a particular grant. Although my time as Minister for Education was long ago I remember it and draw on it. Dublin, Galway, Cork, Maynooth, Trinity, DCU and Limerick universities all operated different schemes of marking for how one could apply for a place. One day I came into the Department on Marlborough Street and said this was ridiculous. I was greatly helped and strengthened by a wonderful education correspondent on The Irish Times, the late Christina Murphy. It was a hotchpotch. Different universities awarded different numbers of points.

I can see the Minister is about to be relieved of the tedium of being here. I am sure she does not see it as tedious, but as an enjoyable process. Her admirable deputy is about to arrive to relieve her. I will burden him with praise and with the two points, one of which I want to take up from Deputy O'Mahony who spoke so eloquently on parents awaiting their naturalisation process. There is not a Deputy in this House who has not been approached about the children of parents who are legally here but, because their naturalisation time of six or seven years has not been fulfilled, are not eligible for a third level grant. It is a case waiting to be taken to courts here and in Europe. These people are here legally. They are not asylum seekers, worthy as they may be, but children of people who are legally resident here and who cannot get a third level grant.

I must praise the primary and secondary schools which do marvellous work with children of all nationalities. The teachers put themselves out. Every morning eight or ten school buses come to the site in Athlone where the mobile homes for the asylum seekers are located. They bring them to different primary schools because they rightly believe they should not all be put into one school but scattered about where they will make different friends. The same occurs at second level; wonderful efforts are made for students.

I ask the Minister of State, Deputy Haughey, to ensure this matter is highlighted, which I am sure it has been. I cannot understand it. A wonderfully talented young woman got over 500 points in her leaving certificate; many an Irish girl or boy would give their eye teeth for them. She came here only in fifth or sixth class of primary school and worked right through second level. Apparently without any great effort she got a wonderful leaving certificate. She is enrolled in the Athlone Institute of Technology, AIT, and is doing remarkably well. She and her mother have had meetings with the college registrar, director and chaplain and, hallelujah, they have reduced her fees to €8,000. That price is like Never Never Land to a woman of that age. She has not got 8,000p, if there were such a thing. The current economic cost of a year's fees in AIT would be €12,000. Many Chinese students flock there because the director is very active and goes to Asia to seek students to fill vacancies since many of the IT courses, as we all know, are experiencing a downturn. AIT has made its great concession from €12,000 to €8,000.

Strangely enough, I have sympathy with AIT. It argues that it cannot make an exception for this very bright young woman while students from other countries, including the Chinese and Asian students, pay the fees. How do we single out one particularly bright family? There are three more daughters and one little boy in the family who are equally if not more clever than the girl to whom I refer. They all hope to make their way in third level. There is a gap of approximately three years between this young woman and the next sibling. Hopefully by the time she comes to third level the citizenship issue will be settled. The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform tells me it is working on a backlog. It does not help at all to have a nephew in that Department. I take my turn like everybody else, and that is as it should be.

This is a grave injustice. We help students through primary and secondary level with wonderful teachers and support systems, SNAs, books, bonding sessions and whatever is needed. When they get a wonderful leaving certificate, wham, the Department can do no more. This young woman has almost finished a year in the college. She will be told she will not be registered next September or October. She may sit her exam but will not get the results. It is difficult not to share her disillusionment. She asks what it was all about, why she was nurtured to do her very best at her leaving certificate and get on to third level in the land of the free. She reached third level and all her dreams are collapsing around her. She cannot find €8,000, and that is for the first year of a four year course.

I ask the Minister of State, Deputy Haughey, to ask the Secretary General of the Department to come and talk to him about this matter. If anybody would fund legal cases for such families they would win hands down.

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