Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

The national reform programme talks about students.  What action is going to be taken to ensure that English-language students from outside of the country are protected and are not allowed to be scammed again as has happened?  There have been scandalous cases whereby Latin American students have lost their life savings, thousands of euro, to travel companies like Travel Now.  It got the students to pay upfront on the promise that when Covid-19 restrictions lifted, the company would have paid for a place for them. When the students subsequently contacted the English-language schools, they were told they had no record of this.  Many students have been scammed out of thousands of euro.  The reason for this is that the Department has failed to ensure its own rules are enforced.  The rules are enforced for the students - they must have an attendance rate of 85% - but not in the case of the rules that state very clearly that the money should be placed in an escrow account so this sort of scam cannot happen.  This is not what has been taking place. As a result, companies are able to walk off with hundreds of thousands of euro from unsuspecting students who have lost their life savings.  Will the Government act to enforce the current rules so that this cannot happen any more?

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