The completion of the final stages of the Student Support Bill in the Houses of Oireachtas this week means a change in the way Mayo student grants are applied for and processed, with a central grant body to assess and award grants, rather than Mayo County Council or Mayo VEC.
The Bill, which has been passed, aims to reform and streamline the application process and deal with grants in a timely manner. A new single student grant scheme will replace the four existing schemes — which will come into effect for the 2011/2012 academic year — while a single grant awarding authority will be designated in 2012 to take over from the 66 local authorities and VECs through which the schemes are currently administered.
Mayo VEC chairman and Fine Gael councillor Jarlath Munnelly said that on one hand he is “supportive of any process which will provide better services” in processing grants for students, yet he also said that the level of local personal assistance and flexibility, which has been provided by Mayo VEC, would be eradicated.
Cllr Munnelly said that in the past couple of years with the embargo on staff recruitment there has been a huge challenge in processing grant applications on time, however the chairman said that staff at the VEC in their expertise have worked hard to deal with applications.
The councillor said that year-on-year there are a vast amount of application forms which are filled out incorrectly, therefore he hoped that the new central grant unit could deal with the amount of work required to deal with all the application forms.
Adding to this, Cllr Munnelly said “let’s go the full distance” and enable online grant applications.
He acknowledged the work done by the VEC but warned “it remains to be seen if replacing the current system will be better”.
