Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)

I will speak to some very specific points on the Bill. We welcome the Bill and the fact that a mechanism is being put in place to ensure a unified scheme to replace the existing schemes. This is long overdue. I will not repeat the points made here previously because there seems to be general agreement about the main thrust of the Bill. My experience, both as a student and as a public representative, has been one typified by frustration. For a student to go into the third semester without receiving any payment whatsoever was a sad indictment of the system of student supports as they existed in the mid-1990s. It is blatantly obvious that the system has not changed much since then, notwithstanding the best efforts of local authority officials, especially those in Cork County Council, and those in VECs, who probably expedited the applications as best they could.

The important point is that the whole system is to be streamlined. In welcoming the Bill, I still do not think that there should be discrimination under section 8 for those students who are attending private colleges. If a student's parents have the means which would deem the student eligible to be successful in getting a grant for an approved college as defined in the Bill, I do not see why such a student cannot avail of a grant to attend a private college as well. In other words, the grant should be paid on the basis of the student rather than the college. We are talking about a social mechanism that enhances the student's ability or lightens the burden as he or she goes through the education system. There should be no discrimination on the basis of choosing one college over another.

We have all been subject to the USI lobby and I welcome its address of the situation as it pertains to part-time students. As previous speakers outlined, we are now in a society and an economy that needs to retrain and upskill itself constantly. I would like to see a situation whereby if somebody is laid off or is forced into part-time work, that person could be deemed eligible for some student support if it means that the person is enhancing his or her prospects of getting back into the labour force. It is time that the traditional mechanisms that existed are reviewed so that we can take account of a more plural society whereby everything is not designated by a person's parents' income, whether the person is eligible for a back to education allowance or whether a person has been out of education for a number of years and is receiving social welfare payments. The system should also take cognisance of those people who have been working full time for a number of years but will suffer a serious loss of income by going back into full-time education. Such people need a degree of support as well. We must take into account the whole gamut of society, not just a few people.

I welcome the appeals mechanism because the current system has been very prescriptive in how it arrives at a decision. If a student is going to college and if there are mitigating circumstances relating to the financial outgoings of his or her parents, they should be taken into account. To make a decision based on the P60, P21 and P45 and without taking other factors into account is not good enough. There needs to be a certain degree of discretion and I hope that it works in favour of the student when using the appeals mechanism. Where the VEC deems that the student is worthy of the grant, it should err on the side of granting financial assistance. I have met people who, because they are a couple of hundred euro over the limit, have been completely washed out of the system. There are people on fixed incomes in this country who need that financial assistance, but who have found themselves outside the system and cannot afford to return to college. That may be an issue for which we need to look at the income limits, but we still need to examine it on an overall basis.

We generally support the Bill. We believe that it is time to look at part-time students. We need to encourage more people into the education system and the way to do that is not to make it prohibitively expensive for them to do so. We believe that the grant should follow the student and not necessarily the so-called approved institution, as it is labelled in the Bill. There has been a marked increase in the number of private institutions that are providing excellent courses that ultimately add value to society and to the economy. If a student decides that he or she wants to go to a private college, he or she should not suffer discrimination on the basis that it is not an approved institution.

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