My Department meets the tuition fees of eligible students under the free fees initiative. The main conditions of this scheme are that students must be first-time undergraduates; and hold EU nationality or official refugee status and have been ordinarily resident in an EU member country for at least three of the five years preceding their entry to an approved third level course.
The student charge is levied by third level institutions to defray the costs of examinations, registration and students services. All students who are eligible under my Department's means-tested maintenance grant schemes — approximately 36% of the student cohort — have the student charge paid on their behalf by the local authorities and vocational education committees, in addition to their other entitlements.
Due to the significant increases in grants and in qualifying income limits, no student whose reckonable income for grant purposes is less than €42,360, where there are fewer than four children, has to pay the charge. Higher income thresholds than this apply in cases where there are four or more dependent children in the family.