Rose Conway-Walsh Demands PUP Holiday Disregard for Students

Go raibh agad caan coirle. Minister, I want to know will the holiday disregard of 4,500 be applied to the PUP payment to create equity that if the students were working as they normally would, they would get this regard. I really, really want to know before I leave here today, is this disregard going to be applied and that is at a minimum that the 4,500 would be disregarded. Thank you. The Student Support Scheme is obviously a critical financial support for students participating in higher education. As of earlier this week, Susie had received almost 74,000 applications from students. To date, almost 53,500 applications have been assessed, with over 47,000 of them deemed as eligible for support for the next academic year. As in any statutory scheme, a core principle is that there is a consistency of approach and equitable treatment for applicants as part of the means assessment process. This applies to people who are dependent on different types of social protection payments. The pandemic unemployment payment has been treated as a recordable income since it was introduced in March 2020. Income from the COVID-19 payment, therefore, has the same standing and is treated in a similar fashion to other Department of Social Protection payments, such as Job Seekers Benefit or Job Seekers Allowance. This means that a student or family on a pandemic unemployment payment should be treated in the same way as a student or family who are dependent on Job Seekers Benefit or Allowance. The holiday earnings disregard does not apply to these social protection payments and therefore it would not be fair, equitable or possibly legal to apply a different approach to the PUP. However, I do want the Deputy to know that a very important feature of the scheme I would point to is the change of circumstance provision. If an applicant has experienced a change of circumstances during 2021, then they can apply to SUSIE for their application to be assessed or reassessed under a change of circumstances. Such a change in circumstances would clearly include no longer being in receipt of the pandemic unemployment payment. Students will no longer be able to receive the pandemic unemployment from early September in line with normal circumstances where students do not qualify for unemployment payments while at college. So therefore, no student will miss out on the SUSIE as a result of them being in receipt of the pandemic unemployment payment because they won't be receiving it from September onwards. So I know entirely what the Deputy was trying to get at. It is a very important point the Deputy is trying to highlight in not wanting someone to have lost out because they received the PUP. The fact though that a student will not be in a position to receive the PUP from September therefore means they will qualify under the change of circumstances for that PUP to be disregarded. Minister, the exceptional circumstances is not working. Please take it from me, it is not working. People who are in, and families who are in the same financial situation last year as they are this year, are being excluded from SUSIE. It is completely unacceptable. Now, I completely understand in terms of social welfare and disregards and uniformity across the board, but we are in a global pandemic. We have made all kinds of exceptions. We have put through emergency legislation, everything else. Why are students being singled out? Minister, what you are doing is you are putting money in students' pocket with one hand and you are taking out twice as much. Minister, this is the same with medical cards. I spoke to a mother yesterday evening where her son had lost his medical card because of PUP. The impact of, if students had known at the beginning that were they to accept PUP, they would be excluded from medical cards or many of them would be excluded from medical cards and to be excluded from SUSIE. They would never have taken that PUP payment. I really do think the PUP payment is directly connected to employment. Thank you Deputy. Thank you Deputy. I think there is a cross line of communication here, so let me be clearer. Because students will not be in a position to receive the pandemic unemployment payment if they are full time students from September. Therefore, that student will have an entitlement to have their SUSIE application assessed as though they have not received the pandemic unemployment payment. That is the purpose of the change of circumstances. So I met my officials as recently as yesterday on this because I know and in fairness I acknowledge Deputy Conway Walsh has pursued this matter on a number of occasions and it is an important point. If students were going to be receiving the PUP beyond September, we would have the issue the Deputy is talking about. But because students are not going to be eligible to receive the PUP from September, all of those students, all of them, will qualify to have their SUSIE application reassessed under the change of circumstances with their PUP payment not factored in. What I will arrange though is for SUSIE to provide a briefing for OROCTHIS members on this and I will also arrange for SUSIE to communicate directly with students and put information directly on their website in relation to this. Because the intention we have here is the same. No student will lose out as a result of them receiving the pandemic. Thank you Minister. So basically you need to tell SUSIE then you need to communicate with SUSIE. So for people who are applying at the moment and they are being told that they are over the limit, they need to know. You see parents and students need to plan now as to whether they can afford to go to college, whether they can afford to continue their education or not. And they really need to know. So them waiting until September and then hoping that everything will be okay, it really is going to delay things and clog things up. And parents and students have enough worries as it is without being excluded from this. I really don't, in all honesty, in dealing with SUSIE in terms of change of circumstances and that, it is not as simple as you portray it there. And I really think that we are in such exceptional times that there should be an exceptional blanket at a minimum, the 4,500. Why can that not be done? And I know you are saying in terms of social welfare, but because it is an exceptional payment, surely there is some mechanism between your department and SUSIE that it can be done. Thank you. Not to surprise the deputy, but I am actually doing more for students than the deputy is asking me to do, because I am saying not only are we going to put in a disregard of 4,500, we are going to actually say because you, Student A, a full-time student, are no longer entitled to receive PUP from September, if you apply for the change of circumstances, that will mean that your application will be reassessed without your PUP payments being calculated as part of it. SUSIE have kept on additional staff. You probably know SUSIE take on staff for certain periods. They have extended that period to deal with, as you say, more students will be using the change of circumstances this year. The change of circumstances is a well-established procedure. We have seen that it can operate at scale. For example, last year, or this current year, we saw over 10,000 applicants declare a change of circumstance and about 40% of them related to COVID-19. But I take your point about this needing to be simple, needing to be straightforward for students, needing to be well-publicised and well-advertised, and I will arrange for SUSIE to provide a briefing for members of the Oireachtas on this, and most importantly, to communicate directly with students through student unions, through their website, etc., in terms of how students can avail of this. But I do genuinely believe the change of circumstances route will address the issue that the deputy is highlighting. Thank you, Minister. Thank you.