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Third Level Costs

Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 22 June 2021

Tuesday, 22 June 2021

Questions (480)

Gary Gannon

Question:

480. Deputy Gary Gannon asked the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science the estimated cost of increasing the non-adjacent maintenance grant from the current rate of €3,025 to €4,025 and extending this to part-time students at undergraduate and postgraduate level. [33563/21]

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Written answers

Based on the students in receipt of the 100% non-adjacent SUSI grant for the 2020/21 academic year (25,658).  The estimated cost of increasing the non-adjacent maintenance grant from €3,025 to €4,025 for eligible full-time students under the Student Grant Scheme at undergraduate and post-graduate level is in the region of €25.7m per academic year.

The latest statistics from the Higher Education Authority (HEA)*  indicate that in the academic year 2019/20  there were 27,392 part-time undergraduate and 18,401 part-time postgraduate students at HEA funded institutions. The estimated cost of extending the non-adjacent maintenance grant of €4,025 to part-time students at undergraduate and postgraduate level for the duration of studies is outlined in the table below.

 

Year 1

Year 2

Year 3

Year 4

Cost per   year

€184.3m

€368.6m

€552.9m

€737.2m

The Programme for Government contains commitments to, amongst other things, review SUSI eligibility criteria, adjacency rates and postgraduate grant supports. The review of the Student Grant Scheme is underway with over 250 submissions received via the public consultation process and over 9,000 survey responses were received through an online survey process. It is anticipated that the SUSI review will be completed later this year and will inform policy priorities for the next Estimates process and future considerations regarding the development of student grant policy.  At this point I cannot pre-empt the outcome of the review to indicate when any proposed changes will come into effect. 

 *source https://hea.ie/statistics/data-for-download-and-visualisations/data-for-download/2019-20-enrolment-data-for-download/

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