Katherine Zappone (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. I am delighted to have him respond and am hoping for a positive outcome, as he gave to Senator Brennan.

I refer to the need for the Minister for Social Protection to re-evaluate the eligibility rules related to the Student Universal Support Ireland, SUSI, maintenance grant for parents in full-time education who are no longer eligible to receive the one parent family payment, and transferring to the back to education allowance, are not currently eligible to keep their maintenance grant, which assists them towards the cost of child care and commuting.

As of 2 July this year, any parent on the one-parent family payment with a child aged seven years or above will no longer be eligible for the payment. That means that lone parents who are currently in full-time education will now need to apply for the back to education allowance, which is granted on a discretionary basis. Hence, it will be up to individual social welfare officers to decide if these students will be granted this allowance, which will ultimately determine whether they will be able to continue in their studies. Obviously, being denied this grant would be devastating for anyone who has been working hard towards a degree for years in that they will be forced to drop out of their course. This is something that we cannot accept and must work towards changing. Even if they are granted the back to education allowance, they are not currently eligible to receive the SUSI maintenance grant and will only receive the fee portion of the grant.

As the Minister is aware, the SUSI grant consists of a student contribution towards the fees and the maintenance grant. This has been indispensable for the lone parents, of whom 97% are women, to pursue their higher education goals while on the one-parent family payment. There are many women currently in education full-time on the one parent family payment and when their child moves beyond the age of seven they will be in the midst of the education, and this is impacting on them. The rate of the maintenance grant ranges from €300 to €5,915 a year and it is based on household income, living distance from the college and the number of children. It is a grant that has assisted lone parents towards the cost of child care and commuting while they are in full-time education and without that financial support most of these women will be forced out of education.

The Minister is here on behalf of the Minister for Social Protection and I ask that reason and common sense take hold here. Good parenting tells us that children under ten years of age still need minding and cannot be left on their own while their parents are at work or in education. Their school days are short, and access to affordable after-school places is limited. That is one of the reasons I have, since the introduction of these changes, opposed the lowering of the age threshold to seven under the one-parent family payment. The Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection has promised that a child care system similar to what is found in Scandinavian countries would be in place before these changes take effect but that has not been acted on. I know there are movements towards that. I am very familiar with what is going on in that arena but this is where we are now, and we would all agree that we do not have anywhere near such a Nordic model of child care as a public service in this country. This is where we are now, and it will impact a number of women.

The Minister, the Tánaiste, and the Minister of State, Deputy Humphreys, are sincere when they advocate their support for lone parents to participate in education and training. I am aware of the reform the Tánaiste has introduced in that regard, but the women I am speaking about have been hit disproportionately harder than any other segment of Irish society. They are dynamic and they are driven. They do not want to have to drop out of the education course they are in the midst of because they will no longer get a maintenance grant. I ask the Minister for a guarantee that the lone parents in full-time education would be granted the back to education allowance, without discretion, and that the rules of the SUSI grant would be adjusted to better facilitate their care duties when they move to the back to education allowance.