Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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Question 118: To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if a person (details supplied) seeking a grant can change their status from a mature student dependent on their parents to an independent mature student as this is the correct classification in view of the fact that the original application was completed incorrectly. [12477/11]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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The decision on eligibility for a student grant is a matter for a student's local grant awarding body – the relevant local authority or VEC. The student in question should, therefore, contact his grant awarding authority and make arrangements to amend his original application form and to provide the proofs required to support the revised information.

In the absence of all of the relevant details that would be contained in an individual's application form and the necessary proofs that must be provided, the Deputy will appreciate that it would not be possible for me to say whether or not the student in question can or should be assessed as a mature student.

However, in relation to the specific clauses in the 2010 student grant schemes governing this issue, the position is that a student may be assessed as an independent mature student if he/she has attained the age of 23 on the 1st of January of the year of first entry to an approved course or of re-entry following a break in studies of at least three years and is not ordinarily resident with his/her parents from 1 October 2009. Otherwise he/she would continue to be assessed on the basis of his/her parents' income.