Vol. 529 No. 1
1261 Mr. G. Reynolds asked the Minister for Education and Science the reason further to a letter from Deputy Gerard Reynolds of 19 September 2000 and an acknowledgement from his private secretary, dated 29 September 2000, Deputy Reynolds has not received a complete reply to his query since that date, regarding application for third level grants for persons (details supplied) in County Leitrim. [2074/01]
My Department receives a large volume of correspondence, including representations from members of the Oireachtas and other public representatives. The overall aim would be to reply within a period of 21 days to correspondence and if this cannot be done, to issue an acknowledgement.
The Deputy's representations relate to the case of two applications for grant assistance from members of the same family, one of whom applied to County Leitrim VEC for a third level maintenance grant for trainees – TLT – and one candidate who applied to Leitrim County Council for a higher education grant.
With regard to the application for a TLT grant, a query in respect of the reckonable income limit to be applied was received by my Department from County Leitrim VEC on 15 September 2000. Every effort is made by my officials to respond promptly to such queries, to avoid unnecessary delay in the processing of applications for grant assistance. While, in the case in question, a reply issued to County Leitrim VEC on 25 September 2000, and was subsequently copied to Leitrim County Council, I regret that due to the volume of correspondence on hand and an oversight, a response to the Deputy's representations on the matter did not issue.
The query in this case related to the assessment of reckonable income. Under the terms of the third level student support schemes, a candidate's reckonable income, for the purposes of the means test, is his/her gross income from all sources and the gross income of his-her parents or guardians where applicable, with certain specified social welfare and health board payments being exempt.
County Leitrim VEC, which is responsible for the assessment of means in the case of applications for a TLT grant, sought a direction from my Department as to whether or not the interest on borrowing for capital expenditure could be offset against reckonable income for grants purposes.
Interest on borrowing for capital expenditure purposes is not deductible in computing reckonable income for grant purposes and, accordingly, the interest on capital expenditure borrowing must be included as reckonable income for purposes of the grants schemes.
