Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 22 June 2021
482. Deputy Gary Gannon asked the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science the estimated cost of increasing the adjacent maintenance grant from €1,215 to €2,215 for full-time students at undergraduate and postgraduate level. [33565/21]
View answerBased on the students in receipt of the 100% adjacent SUSI grant for the 2020/21 academic year (21,668). The estimated cost of increasing the non-adjacent maintenance grant from €1,215 to €2,215 for eligible full-time students under the Student Grant Scheme at undergraduate and post-graduate level is in the region of €21.7m per academic year.
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.
