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Prospective Green Certificate students who were accidentally accepted on to a course at Westport College of Further Education have been fully refunded and offered a place for next year after the course was completely oversubscribed.
Westport College of Further Education (CFE) opened its popular Green Cert course for applications at the end of January.
There are up to 200 places available annually on the course which starts in September. Several IT glitches resulted in an excess amount of students being accepted on to the 2021 course.
The college has offered refunded students first refusal on places on its September 2022 course
Michael Murphy, Westport CFE principal, told the Irish Farmers Journal: “The course normally fills up quickly. Last year it only took 23 hours to fill. There was huge interest this year though and all the places were gone in less than six minutes.”
Murphy explained that a software error meant over 450 payments were received before the application process could be closed. Places were offered on a first come, first served basis, with those applications received after the 200 mark was passed given a full refund.
The college has offered refunded students first refusal on places on its September 2022 course.
Murphy said the demand was unprecedented and attributed the additional interest to the numbers of people who had returned to their home counties due to COVID-19.
There were over 1,000 names on the college’s expression of interest list for 2021.
It seems absolutely ludicrous that this is the case when we want to encourage young farmers to take up farming as a profession
Westport CFE said that the Mayo Sligo Leitrim Education and Training Board (MSLETB) was reviewing capacity and current provision for agriculture programmes at the college.
Sinn Féin spokesperson for higher education and Mayo TD Rose Conway-Walsh said it was obvious there weren’t enough places to cater for the demand.
“It seems absolutely ludicrous that this is the case when we want to encourage young farmers to take up farming as a profession.”
She highlighted the knock-on consequences for young farmers who are required to have a Green Cert to qualify for several Department of Agriculture schemes, as well as tax reliefs from Revenue.
“The Department of Higher Education and the Department of Agriculture need to get their heads together and sort this situation out,” she said.
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