THE plight of a Kerry family who have been refused a student grant for their eldest child, despite being in receipt of a Family Income Support payment, has been raised by Deputy John Brassil.
He said there is a clear mismatch between how the Department of Social Protection and the Student Universal Support Service (SUSI) look at financial need.
“On the one hand, we have a family who have been deemed to be in need of a social welfare top-up payment due to their level of outgoings. On the other hand, SUSI simply looks at a family’s gross income and does not take into account the costs they are incurring,” he said.
“It doesn’t make any sense to me that two different agencies of the State would view a family’s means in very different ways. We need to eliminate any ambiguity when it comes to what is and isn’t available to families,” the Kerry TD stated.
Deputy Brassil said the family that contacted him may not now be able to send their eldest child to college.
“The student won’t get a maintenance grant and will now have to pay a registration fee well in excess of €2,000 per year. What happens next year or the year after when a younger sibling starts college?” he asked.
The Fianna Fail TD said the Minister for Social Protection, Regina Doherty, needs to start communicating with Minister for Education, Richard Bruton, to ensure that anomalies like this are addressed.
“I don’t think it is good public policy to be stopping Irish children from going to third level education,” he said.
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