Assets test for college grants opposed
Their reaction follows reports that assets as well as salaries will be taken into account in future.
Education Minister Noel Dempsey, seeking to introduce a more equitable assessment system, confirmed “contacts” have been made with the Revenue Commissioners about the system that might be used.
Eddie Downey, Irish Farmers Association farm business chairman, said introducing the value of farmland into the criteria was “totally regressive”.
The current debate “totally ignores the fact that farming is a low-income sector where the vast majority of farmers have to survive at incomes way below other sectors,” he said.
More stringent testing would also hit college going children of business people and the self-employed.
Farmers’ children get 15% of new higher-education grants. Students from professional, self-employed or managerial backgrounds receive a further 13% of the grants.
The Programme for Government 2002 undertook to introduce “a unified and flexible grant scheme” for the payment of maintenance grants.
Labour party education spokesperson Jan O’Sullivan, who is backing a more equitable system, said: “A family can be means-tested without any assessment taking place. This creates an anomaly in the grants system in favour of people with substantial assets, such as large farmers, business people and the self-employed.”
Mr Dempsey told Ms O’Sullivan in the Dáil his department has begun discussions on a single unified system with the Department of Social & Family Affairs.
