A SMALL PIECE of Oireachtas history will be made today when a member of the public is invited into a committee to argue in favour of his own petition.

The nine-month-old petitions system has seen 86 petitions submitted by members of the public so far – and today marks the first occasion on which the organiser of a petition has been invited in to state their case.

This afternoon, Thomas Kevin Walshe will be invited in to argue in favour of revised conditions for eligibility for the Back to Education Allowance scheme.

The allowance is paid to unemployed and disabled people, or single parents, so that they might be able to afford to go back into education and retrain – essentially allowing them to maintain their welfare payments while they go to school or college.

The petition was submitted last September, shortly after the petitions system was launched, and was the subject of deliberations at committee level in November and December.

This afternoon, however, Walshe will be invited into the committee alongside representatives from the Department of Social Protection and the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed.

System loaded against newly-unemployed applicants

In his petition, which was submitted before the working of the system was changed in the last Budget, Walshe outlined how he had been unemployed for 126 days when he applied for the allowance when enrolling in an Arts degree in UCD in 2011.

He was refused the allowance, on the basis that someone must be unemployed for 234 days before becoming entitled to the grant.

He was able to complete his first year with the help of his family, but when he applied for the allowance the following year, he was again turned down – because he had not been looking for work while he was in college, and was still considered only to have been unemployed for 126 days.

He has now taken a leave of absence from UCD for financial reasons – and has resumed receiving jobseeker’s benefit in the meantime. If he was to return to college, however, he would be forced to give this up – without the comfort of the Back to Education Allowance, which stands at precisely the same rate.

Because the Back to Education Allowance is not organised on a statutory basis, there is no formal appeals process for someone to go to.

Read: How does the new public petitions system work?