Although a spokeswoman for the Department of Education said that it is up to each applicant to ensure that their statement of income is truthful, she told the Sunday Tribune that the Department of Education will press authorities awarding grants to "rigorously pursue" cases and "take action" when a suspected case of fraud is detected. "If a candidate's failure to provide full and complete information is the result of a deliberate material omission or inaccuracy, the candidate shall be liable to prosecution, loss of grant and repayment, with interest, of any portion of a grant already received, " she said.

There are four different schemes for maintenance grants available from the Department of Education and Science: higher education grants (HEG); third level maintenance grants for trainees (TLT); vocational education committees' scholarships (VEC) and maintenance grants for students attending European Social Fund-aided post-leaving certificate courses (PLC). The HEG scheme covers full-time undergraduate courses not less than two years in duration in a third-level institute . . . in other words, an average university/college degree course . . . and is paid for with Irish and EU public funds. The HEG scheme also covers fulltime postgraduate or masters' courses.

A number of conditions have to be met for a student to be eligible to receive a grant.

Age, residence, 'means' and nationality are all scrutinised by administrators in the Department of Education. A candidate must be at least 17 years of age and under 23 years of age to qualify or over 23 years of age to qualify as a 'mature candidate'. Regarding residency, a candidate must have been 'ordinarily resident' in a county council, corporation or VEC area from the previous October to their application. Only EU citizens, those with official refugee status or people who have been granted humanitarian leave to remain in the state are eligible for a grant application.

The main qualifying element of grant application is the means test. A candidate's income must be below a certain level in order for them to qualify. It is this condition that is most open to grant fraud, in particular amongst the selfemployed, who control their own salary and their own accounts. The income by which the provision of a grant is judged is the 'reckonable income' of a household, in other words, the gross income of parents/guardians and the individual themselves for the tax year immediately preceding the academic year.

In the event of a household being that of a single/divorced parent, the income of the parent with whom the individual resides is judged to be the 'reckonable' income by which the means test will judge. Two types of mature candidates can be judged: a mature candidate dependent on parents, or an independent mature candidate.

The student grant application form (the closing date for which was last Thursday) is a long and detailed document running to 15 pages. Income from PAYE employment, social welfare and Health Service Executive payments, pensions, retirement lump sums, rental income and any other income from land and property, income from self employment including farming, gross income from deposit accounts, investments, SSIAs, gifts and inheritances must all be declared. At the moment, the combined income limit for receiving a grant, where there are less than four children in a family is 46,700.

The number of farmers' children seeking student grants rose by nearly a quarter between the academic years of 2002/3 and 2003/4.

One-third of all higher-education grants are now being awarded to students from farming, professional or managerial backgrounds.

The number of children of professionals receiving student grants rose by almost one-third last year, and the number of children with parents as employers or in managerial posts rose by a massive 64%. Because the Department of Education cannot socially categorise around one-third of all students who receive grants, this unusual figure could be even larger.

In schemes such as student maintenance grants, it's PAYE workers who lose out the most. Generally, they find themselves just above the lowincome threshold and are therefore exempt from receiving financial assistance for their children attending thirdlevel education institutes.

STUDENT LIFE DOWN THE YEARS

'NO MONEY' Mark Little President TCD SU 1988-89 IT WAS pretty tough. Fees could cost up to four grand. I was in debt for years after college. It took me "ve or six years to "nally pay off my loan. That was largely down to immaturity. It was very easy to build up credit with the banks. But, at 19 and 20 years old you are going to make mistakes. I couldn't really work part-time either, because I was really involved with the Students Union. The key thing then was that one in four of us was emigrating. We were looking to work abroad when we "nished college. In the '80s, there was a lot more misery in being a student - we were all drowning our sorrows in a pint of beer.

Eamon Gilmore USI president 1976-78, president UCG SU, 1974-75 TO pay for college, I worked at a pub in Ballinasloe. I also received a grant and lived off that until Easter.

After that, I would go to the Bank of Ireland. The manager there understood the situation and he gave me a loan to tide me over until after the exams. During the summer, we would all head off to England or America tofind work. I went to London. There was no employment here. It was particularly difficult because there was no student vote until 1973 - we had to be over 21. In 1977, there was a huge number of young people on the electoral registrar, which helped create change.

Ivana Bacik President TCD SU, 1989-90 STUDENTfinances were very precarious . . . it was very dodgy.

We would live on the sum of our earnings from summer jobs, and those jobs were mostly available in America or England. I didn't qualify for a grant, so I earned money as a waitress at McCarthy's pub in town. I used to get just IR£9 ( 11) for one shift and worked a couple of nights a week. That money was mostly going to my nights out. When we graduated, many of us had no choice but to work abroad. There was 18% unemployment then, so many Trinity graduates, like myself, went to London.

Adrian Langan USI president 1998-99 THERE were a lot of hardship cases in the mid-'90s. Some students genuinely struggled, and a number of them didn't make it through. The hardship fund was minuscule and the grant was certainly an issue. There was a lot of noise being made about that. I remember cases where a parent who was the breadwinner of the family died, and they stopped receiving the grant - their support system was cut. The grant system was not altogether fair. The category of a single parent didn't enter into into it. I became a single parent a few years into college, and it was tough. After college, I was broke. I left with no money. We had no clue how to handle money, but I think overall we managed OK.