Students may get timely grant payments as scheme is unified

THE handling of all third-level student grants is to be taken over by the country’s Vocational Education Committees (VECs), Education Minister Mary Hanafin is expected to announce this week.

Under current structures, there are four student support schemes administering the 56,000 grants.

But two-thirds of these are already being handled by the VECs, which competed with the country’s local authorities for the running of the unified grants scheme.