The Minister for Education is planning to set up a new central agency to pay grants to third-level students. It is understood that he is looking at proposals that grants be means-tested by the Revenue Commissioners and allocated through the social welfare payments computer system.
Mr Martin's aim is to have the new system in place for students applying for grants from late 1998 to early 1999.
There has been widespread dissatisfaction with the payment of student maintenance grants by local authorities and VECs over recent years. In 1993, the report of the de Buitleir committee on third-level student support criticised the operation of the present system in a number of areas.
The committee concluded that the standard of service provided was "unacceptably low"; grants were approved too late; there was a scramble to complete the process in the few weeks between the publication of Leaving Certificate results and the start of the academic year; and grants were paid too late and in too few instalments.
Public confidence in the system's fairness was "very low" and there was "serious resentment", particularly among PAYE earners, about how it operated, according to the report.
Mr Martin believes that the system is extremely wasteful in terms of both time and money. He wants faster processing of grant applications and means-testing to be carried out more efficiently, probably by the Revenue Commissioners, before the Central Applications Office's final deadlines. He also wants every student to know before the publication of CAO offers whether they will receive a grant if offered a college place.
The Minister intends to ensure that no student who has qualified for a grant will have to pay a deposit in order to accept a CAO offer. He wants students and their parents to have easy local access to information about the scheme.
Mr Martin is now consulting other Government Departments and interested bodies such as the universities and the Union of Students in Ireland. He will be asking them how frequently grant payments should be issued, at the beginning of every term or monthly. At present, some students do not receive their autumn term grant until close to Christmas.
He is attracted to the possibility of using the social welfare system to pay grants because student maintenance grants to lower-income families would then be part of a more general income-support mechanism. The Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs - formerly Social Welfare - also has offices throughout the State, which would facilitate improvements in the poor dissemination of information about the scheme.
The new system would be administered by the Department of Education and grants would be paid separately from social welfare benefits. Students would probably have a choice of receiving them through the post, collecting them at post offices, or - as at present - through their colleges.
Government sources pointed out that the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs has one of Europe's most advanced computerised social welfare payment systems, while the Revenue Commissioners are similarly well-equipped for means-testing payments.
See also page 5