Kathryn Reilly (Sinn Fein)

I would like to support the amendment to the Order of Business. I ask the Leader to invite the Minister for Education and Skills to come to the House to discuss his plans for third level student grants and the delays suffered by students across the State. The Minister has said that although the existing 66 awarding bodies will continue to process grants in 2011 and 2012, a single unified scheme will be introduced this year to replace the four existing schemes. The Minister should come to the House to give us the details of the new single scheme.

The application forms for the student grants are not yet available. In February this year, there were more than 2,000 students who had not received the first instalment of their grant which should have been paid in September last. Up to 50 students a week had to drop out of their college courses because they could no longer afford to study. Local authorities and VECs were overwhelmed. They were under enormous strain trying to process the grants and late payments. This was all when the forms were available on time. Currently, the forms are not available. Given the considerable volume of applications and the significantly reduced and overburdened staff in these VECs and local authorities who are processing these grants, any delay in issuing the application forms is disastrous and will have a knock-on effect on education, college drop-out rates and, ultimately, youth unemployment rates. The Minister cannot afford to be laid back on this issue. He needs to come to this House to address why the application forms have not yet been issued and to tell us the details of the new single grant scheme. I would ask the Leader to facilitate this.