The High Court dismissed a student’s appeal against the refusal of a special-rate maintenance grant, holding that the grant scheme required an eligible social welfare payment on a specified date.
Shane Cronin, a University College Dublin student, already received the standard grant: a full maintenance grant and a full contribution towards student fees. He sought the additional grant because his mother received long-term social welfare and her income was below the scheme’s €22,703 threshold.
The Student Grants Appeals Board refused the top-up. The parties accepted that Cronin met the standard-grant and income conditions, and that his mother had received Jobseeker’s Allowance for most of 2015. But on 31 December 2015, the scheme’s specified date for the 2016/17 academic year, she was receiving Illness Benefit. That payment was not among the eligible payments listed in the scheme.
Cronin argued that the Board had misinterpreted Article 19(7) and that it was absurd for his mother’s payment on one day to determine eligibility. He relied on a footnote allowing Illness Benefit to count towards a 391-day period when it fell between periods of Jobseeker’s Allowance or Jobseeker’s Benefit.
The court rejected that interpretation. It said the footnote allowed periods of Illness Benefit to count towards the required duration of welfare payments, but did not make Illness Benefit an eligible payment in its own right. The scheme expressly required reckonable income to include an eligible payment on 31 December 2015.
Justice Twomey said the distinction could appear unfair, but noted that neither side had provided evidence explaining the policy behind it. The appeal was a point-of-law challenge to the Board’s decision, not a request to strike down the scheme as unconstitutional or to find that the Minister had acted beyond legal authority. The court said it could not rewrite the scheme or decide which welfare payments should qualify; any change was for the legislature.
The court therefore dismissed the appeal. It did not award the top-up grant.