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Fiasco & Debacle

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  • 02-11-2012 8:00pm
    #1
    pauly58
    Registered Users Posts: 245 ✭✭


    I've been following the threads on here with a mixture of despair & sympathy, as I am in a similar position.
    I have two sons, both students & count on the maintenance grant as we are on social welfare. We have dealt with Cork County Council for the past three years for my eldest son's grant & the girls are fantastic.

    My youngest son has been through Cork VEC for the past two years with no real problems with his grant, now comes this year.
    We filled in the online application, that is so bad ,my son a third year multi media student could have done a better job of designing, fired it off & went through the stages of sending off paper work etc, sending final course acceptance & then the final letter came through. Fees paid & student contribution paid, maintenance grant zero. This was October 11th.

    After catching my breath I rang susi & a young lad said immediately there's no maintenance grant for level 8, then he was a post graduate student, he's not, then is he claiming BTEA, he's not, finally he said well it says zero on the system, you can appeal. He wouldn't give me his full name only John.

    I rang my local TD & made an appointment for the next day. He took all the details & I left it to him. I received a letter from susi saying it had been reviewed & we were entitled to €2375, a strange figure I thought, I was expecting €5915. I looked up the rates & it was for the special rate of payment alright but at the adjacent rate.We are well over the 45 km distance, the very helpful supervisor at Cork Council worked it out for me on the phone when it changed.

    Back onto my TD & they got on to susi again, only to be told we could appeal it but he won't accept that & is pushing them for a decision.

    I can't believe this level of incompetence can happen & I wonder has orders come from above to drag this out as much as possible & generally piss people off & hope some students pull out. Whenever we had to ring susi the feeling we got was they don't know. Quinn has a lot of questions to answer & his attitude seems to be why bother educating them, they're only going to emigrate anyway.

    Joan Burton is no better, her statement that she understands that student are missing paperwork from applications, told to her by susi management I imagine, makes a farce of what is really happening. I had the same when the medical card renewal came up, they lost my dole slip & said I didn't put it in.

    I can't thank my local TD's office enough, I wouldn't have stood a chance without them, we don't have a landline & the mobile costs a fortune hanging on for them.

    I reckon if we can get it for Christmas it would be good, but really the only answer as I see it is to send the applications back out to the County Councils as susi hasn't a clue, whether by design or accidentally. :mad::mad::mad::mad:


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