Sir, - Another academic year is over for third level students, and still we have had only inaction from the Government on the issue of student maintenance grants.
The current maintenance grant for a student living away from home and attending a university or institute of technology amounts to £49 a week. With rents currently swiftly rising, by up to 18.8 per cent in Dublin for the year to March 2001 (Sunday Business Post, May 13th) and inflation at over five per cent for most of the past year, the cost of being a student has grown steadily in recent times. Increments in the grant, however, have not even matched inflation or increases in the cost of living index, increasing by just nine per cent in the past three years.
Grants are currently administered and issued by local vocational education committees, County councils, urban district councils and city corporations. It would be obvious to even the most foolish that this dissemination of authority and responsibility is a recipe for disaster. Grants from different counties and towns are disbursed on different dates. Cases of grants being distributed to students for a term after lectures for that term have concluded are not exceptional.
The maximum parental income permissible for those wishing to receive a grant is £20,200. This means that a family with both parents working in full time jobs paying £5 an hour will not receive assistance from the State to send their children to third-level education.
The mere fact that a 22-yearold student has his or her financial circumstances measured by the wealth of their parents is bad enough. But, to add insult to injury, this does not happen to the 16-year-old who leaves school after the Junior Certificate and signs on the dole. So why the disparity of treatment?
The State currently pays unemployed persons £73.50 a week, plus a rent allowance, obviously the figure it considers to be necessary for subsistence. Why are students not allowed this sum, apparently deemed essential for survival?
Students' non-completion of courses is currently estimated to cost the country £200 million a year, and much of this can be attributed to those students who simply cannot afford to stay at college. If £200 million were invested in financially assisting those students who cannot afford to stay in third level education, the drop out rate could be reduced significantly.
Dr Woods's singular lack of interest in this issue, despite its being repeatedly raised in both in the Seanad and the Dail, is an insult to the House, to those members and to the population at large.
How many parents are now dreading the scrimping and saving they will have to do next year to afford to give their children a third-level education? These parents are voters too. - Yours, etc.,
Keith Martin, Chairman, Waterford Institute of Technology Students' Union, Waterford.