Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to speak on the motion. I compliment Deputy McConalogue on tabling it, although it should not have been necessary to do so. It is another fine mess the Government has got us into.

I welcome the students in the Visitors Gallery, in particular a student from County Cork, Miss O'Brien. Why can we not learn anything in this country? Why do we change everything that is not broken? It was said there were 66 agencies dealing with this. In south Tipperary the VEC and the county council always dealt with this humanely and with dignity. They knew the people and the parents, and there was always compassion. What did we do? We dreamt up this lovely SUSI. I tell the Minister I do not know who SUSI is, or her sister or her mother, or where she was born or bred. He can tell SUSI to go back to wherever she came from. Send her back to the people who understand this. It is no laughing matter. It is an outrage.

We did the same thing with PPARS in the HSE. It cost millions to bring in this new payment system but what happened? It created a mess. It was the same with the county council tendering sections, which were all relocated to Kerry, so there is no local contact and contractors are upset and have to tender three or four times a year. Big is not wonderful. We centralised the medical cards system to Dublin and that was a fiasco.

I told the Minister to come in to apologise to the House, which he did, but he is not half contrite enough because it is disgraceful to have students in colleges, sometimes without food or any type of resources and denied access to their rightful place. I say to the Minister that this is another fine mess he got us into. The Minister waved a solemn promise to students that there would be no fees. What he wrote was not worth the paper we have out here in the bathroom. This is a mess. The sooner he gets rid of SUSI and brings back Siobhán, which I think is the Gaelic for Susie, and bring back the other Siobháns and the ladies I dealt with in Tipperary and other counties, the better. They dealt with this sensitively and humanely and understood the problems of going to college and the difficulties faced by families.

The Government wants to centralise everything, drive people into penury and put students out of college. I never had the liberty of going to third level college but I did come through the university of life and it was a much better education than the kind of system the Government is putting in place. Government Members should hang their heads in shame.

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