Farm crisis hits Athlone students

Student welfare services in Athlone Institute of Technology have been placed under extra pressure by the crisis in farming. According to the president of Athlone IT students' union, Brendan Kiely, there has been a marked increase in applications for hardship grants from students of farming backgrounds this year.

"The effects of the farming crisis are particularly noticeable here because we have a lot of students from farming families and others whose family income comes from providing services to farms," he says.

The union's welfare officer, Yvonne Guerin, says many of those students are "holding on in college by the skin of their teeth by working long hours in badly paid jobs. Some students have told me they're considering dropping out and working for the rest of the year.

"For these students it's not just a question of not having enough money to go out on a Saturday night. It's a question of not having enough money for food, or having the landlord threaten them about being two weeks behind in the rent, or not being able to get home on a Friday evening.

"Many of them feel they just can't ask their parents for money. In the current conditions, most students feel they can't go to their parents with hands out, week in and week out, especially near Christmas. "This problem has come to a head over the last 12 months, but it's been building up since the crisis in the beef industry. It's a countrywide phenomenon.

"One of the problems is that grant authorities assess eligibility on gross income. That can look quite high on paper for a farming family, but in a year like this, when farmers are paying a large amount of money for fodder and wintering, it doesn't mean an awful lot.

"We welcome the IFA's call for the Family Income Supplement to be extended to farming families, but the grant also has to be increased to an acceptable and realistic level so that students can afford to rent a room, heat it and have enough to eat," Guerin says. RO'S