Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)

That is good. While I welcome this improvement, will the Minister see if she can introduce it for the next academic year?

The regulations for the schemes will govern the classes of grants, the categories of applicants, which may include dependent, independent and mature student criteria. Is there a possibility of a grant category for trainee teachers and health care professionals who incur extra costs during their on-field learning? For example, a student teacher in St. Angela's College, Sligo, will have five teaching practices during his or her undergraduate course. The same applies to students at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, or St. Patrick's College, Drumcondra. They will have to incur all costs associated including travel, accommodation, equipment and classroom costs. Final year nursing students are due to lose their stipend and be made to work for free. Is there any special category provided for in the Bill to cover these students' costs when training in their final year?

A person convicted of committing an offence under this legislation will be ineligible to apply for a grant for ten years. Who will police this, particularly considering when there are many VECs?

Section 24 states:

(1) Where a person, whether or not he or she is a student, has received moneys from an awarding authority that are in respect of a grant that the person is not entitled to receive, the person is liable to repay to the awarding authority on demand a sum not exceeding the amount of money received.

(2) Where the awarding authority pays moneys in respect of a grant to an approved institution, the student on whose behalf they have been paid is deemed to have received the moneys.

Is a student who did not receive the moneys but left them with the college still liable under this section? The largest drop-out rate occurs in the first three months of the academic year. Many of these are just 17 and 18 year olds who would have needed a taster period to get used to college or have made a mistake in their course choice. Many of them re-apply the following year but discover because they dropped out the year before, they are ineligible for a new grant. Can their positions be recognised in this legislation?

Section 30 requires institutions to prepare draft access plans of the policies of the institution in respect of equality, including gender equality, in all activities of the institution. This may be somewhat daft in some institutions such as St. Angela's College, Sligo, for example, which would be overwhelmingly female.

The refusal of an application for being a few euro over the cut-off threshold is hard. I accept there has to be line somewhere but in these difficult economic times this has caused stress for students. I am glad an appeals process is provided for in the Bill. Shortening the time for appeals from 90 days to 45 days is critical.

Eligibility for mature students is not straightforward. Some mature students may have lived at home for the previous 12 months but now live elsewhere. They find they may be eligible for the back to education allowance but not for the grant or fees to be paid. All earnings and benefits of the student and parents are also means-tested. How will this Bill improve this?

Issues and anomalies also arise with independent students, young people who are up to 23 years of age and are completely separated from their parents. The Minister claims the legislation will allow her introduce regulation in this area. When will this happen? In the meantime, is there an option in the appeals process to allow independent students to be recognised as being eligible for maintenance grants?

I thank the Tánaiste and Minister for Education and Skills for attending the House in person for this debate. I look forward to hearing her replies to the questions and issues I raised.