Séamus Healy (Tipperary South, Independent)
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Question 472: To ask the Minister for Education and Science if she will amend the mature candidate dependent on parents category under the higher education grants scheme to ensure that applicants being at home but with personal income, for example, single parents qualify for the grant under their own income and not that of their parents; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [19314/06]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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Under the terms of the Department's maintenance grants schemes, and in accordance with the Local Authorities (Higher Education Grants) Act 1992, a mature student is defined as a candidate who is at least 23 years of age on the 1st January of the year of entry or re-entry to an approved course.

Under the terms of my Department's 2005 Third Level Student Maintenance Grant Schemes the position is that, generally speaking, students who are entering approved courses for the first time are eligible for grants where they satisfy the prescribed conditions with regard to age, residence, means, nationality and previous academic attainment. A mature student is defined for the purposes of the schemes as a candidate who is at least 23 years of age on the 1st January of the year of entry or re-entry to an approved course.

Mature students are categorised as either independent mature students or mature students dependent on parents or guardians. An independent mature student is defined as meaning a mature student who was not ordinarily resident at home with his/her parents or guardians from the October preceding their entry to an approved course. Independent mature students are assessed without reference to either their parents' or guardians' income or address.

When assessing the means of students other than independent mature students, the means test provision of the scheme specifies that the students' means and those of their parents or guardians must be below a prescribed limit. This provision requires that parental income be taken into account irrespective of the individual circumstances in any case where the student is not an independent mature student.

It is not proposed, at present, to change the current definition of mature students.