Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

This case concerns a mature student who is now in her late 20s. She is originally from my constituency and is now in the second year of a degree course in a university outside Dublin. She started her course in 2008 and applied for a higher education grant to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council as a mature student. She was refused the grant on the grounds that she did not satisfy the residency requirement. When she appealed to the Department of Education and Science the decision to refuse the grant was upheld. I have made repeated representations to the Minister for Education and Science, and to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, but to no avail which is why I am raising the issue here today.

This woman worked for approximately ten years. She started to work at 16. She paid her tax, social insurance, etc. She never claimed any social welfare payment from the State. In 2005 she decided to travel. She worked for a while in China, South East Asia and in Australia. While she was back home for brief spells at various times during those three years, she returned to Ireland in August 2008 to start her course in the autumn. She applied for the higher education grant and was informed that she did not satisfy the residency requirement and that she would have needed to have been living in Ireland prior to 1 October 2007.

There was a glimmer of hope in a letter that I got from the Minister for Education and Science on 14 July which stated that local authorities had the discretion to waive this requirement in exceptional circumstances. I pursued this with the county council and it replied, stating that it did not have discretion. The letter stated that the council would only have had such discretion if the person concerned had been out of the country for less than one year and because she was out of the country for more than three years, it was not possible for the county council to waive the requirement in her case. I went back to the Minister on the issue and he replied, stating that he did not have discretion and did not propose to make an exception in this case. This is ludicrous. There is a clear contradiction between what the Minister said - that the local authority had discretion - and the local authority's assertion that it did not have discretion. That is something that can be sorted out by means of a direction from the Minister to the county council, because he is the final arbiter in these cases.

The person in this case was born and reared in my constituency and has worked all her life in Ireland. She went away for a couple of years but she is being treated as though she has just arrived from Mars. The residency requirement is ludicrous in such a case. This woman has managed to get through the first year of her course with considerable difficulty. She is now in her second year and facing a crisis which may force her to withdraw from the course. If she does this, she will cost the State more, in terms of what she is entitled to claim in social welfare, than the value of the grant. Alternatively - this is the daftest aspect of the whole situation - having done a year and a half of the course, she would be entitled to start the course again, claim the grant and receive it because she would by then have been resident in Ireland since 1 October of the year before her application.

I suspect the Minister of State will read out the response I have repeatedly received from the Minister for Education and Science. I appreciate he must read out the script he has been given. However, when we have concluded this exchange, I ask him to discuss this with the Minister and ask him to reconsider this case. Not only is it ludicrous in its own terms and unfair to the young woman concerned, who will suffer hardship as a result, but the way this residence requirement is being applied in student grant cases such as this is quite absurd. It is unfair that a person who has contributed to the State and the Exchequer through payment of taxes through the years is being treated as though she were an absolute stranger who had never lived here before and had no connection with the country. The application of the residency requirement in such circumstances is inappropriate.

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