Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 7 July 2022
2. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science the measures that he is putting in place to address student poverty; if he will consider introducing free public transport, investing in ensuring student accommodation is affordable and subsidising IT; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [36967/22]
View answerFollowing on neatly from the previous discussion, student poverty last year was rampant, with accommodation costs being a key element. Public transport costs and all the cost-of-living issues are now going to hit students. What is the Minister going to do about this? Will he consider bringing in free public transport for everybody in higher education? What are we going to do to bring down the cost of accommodation?
There should be subsidies for student accommodation.
Following the establishment of my Department, I, as Minister, have tried to place a focus on having an affordable higher and further education system and on what we can do to not only address the sustainable funding of the sector but also to reduce the cost to students and families. This is demonstrated by the broad range of initiatives we have introduced and are planning. For example, more than 43,600 students have already been approved, through the student grant scheme, for the college year starting in September 2022.
We also saw an important body of work done that was commissioned by the Department. The review of the Student Universal Support Ireland, SUSI, student grant scheme gave rise to a number of recommendations on issues including the rates of grant, income thresholds, eligibility criteria and postgraduate support. It is my intention to progress measures to reduce the cost of education for families and students through improvements to the student grant scheme. I am pleased to say that we have started that work. We made the first changes to SUSI undergraduate grant rates and eligibility thresholds in a decade, as well as changes to the non-adjacency rules to benefit students who are commuting. Another change we have introduced means students can now earn up to €6,552 during non-term time in 2022, without being concerned that it will affect their eligibility for a grant.
On 4 May, I launched the Funding the Future framework, which sets out how we intend to reduce cost as a barrier to education in the context of budgets. I want to see the student contribution in higher education reduced in a meaningful way.
On accommodation affordability, I have to some degree already outlined my answer to Deputy Conway-Walsh. We in this House have changed the law to make sure that a student cannot be asked to pay more than one month's rent and one month's deposit up front. Students were getting fleeced by being asked to pay four, five, or six months' rent up front in order to secure accommodation. I will be attending a meeting of the Cabinet committee on housing next week to discuss student accommodation.
We have provided laptops to disadvantaged students to help tackle the digital divide. It is expected that 20,000 students will receive a free laptop under the initiative. The Department of Transport has introduced a new youth travel card that will offer a 50% discount on fares across the public transport networks. The post-leaving certificate levy of €200 is being abolished from September 2022.
These are very small changes. We need to go a lot further. There needs to be a complete change of mindset. Accessing further and higher education should be seen in the same light as primary or secondary education. We want as many people to access further and higher education as possible, and we need to remove all barriers in order to facilitate that. We have the highest fees in Europe. They should be abolished. It is crazy to have registration fees. Only 30% of students benefit from grants.
It is 42%.
Maybe it has gone up slightly, but the vast majority do not get grants. The new student accommodation being built on the UCD campus will cost students €1,400 to rent. Even as a temporary measure, all third level students should get the housing assistance payment, HAP. I do not really like HAP but at least it reduces the cost of rent. That is a temporary measure the Government could bring in for all third level students. Why do we not do what is being done in Germany, where public transport fares have been reduced by 90%? Could we not at least offer free public transport to all third level students or dramatically reduce the cost in the same way we have done for school-going students?
I accept that there is more we can do. However, I do not accept that everything we have done has been minor. The provision of free laptops has made a substantial difference according to the students I have heard from.
For some.
Up to 20,000 of the most disadvantaged students will receive them. I presume the Deputy would want me to target the most disadvantaged. A 50% reduction in the cost of public transport is a very big step forward brought in by my colleague, the Minister for Transport, Deputy Eamon Ryan. We have abolished, in its entirety, the fee for post-leaving certificate courses from September 2022. Some students will also see their grants increase by between 20% and 33% as a result of the changes made to adjacency, but we need to do more.
I am encouraged by the fact that the summer economic statement refers to budget 2023 and nods clearly in the direction of measures that will need to be brought in with an immediate impact in 2022, when the budget is announced. I assure the Deputy that I have spelt out the policy direction I want to take in that regard, further improving student grants and trying to reduce the registration fee. I will be working with my Government colleagues to see what the package of additional supports for students and their parents and families in this calendar year will look like as part of that budgetary process.
Although the student unions do not have all the figures, I spoke to them this morning and they reckon that more people dropped out of college last year than ever before because of accommodation costs and the cost-of-living crisis. That is their estimate. In University College Cork last year, there were record numbers of students going to food banks at the beginning of term. Such were the numbers and so desperate were the students for food that, according to one report, all the food in the food bank was gone in 48 minutes. Imagine how much worse it will be with the cost-of-living crisis?
It is unacceptable that students are paying €1,000, €1,200, €1,400 in accommodation costs. It is madness to impose any transport costs on them. We want people to go to college. We should get rid of fees, full stop. There is no justification for having college fees. There are fees in private schools and in our two-tier education system, but we should not have fees at all for education, be it primary, secondary or third level.
I would not know about the private education system. The Deputy cannot come into the Chamber and mention figures or anecdotes that are not backed up by facts. He quoted a figure of 30%. I accept that he acknowledges this figure may not be accurate. A lot more than 30% of students received student grants. From my memory, the figure is up to 42%.
It is still a minority.
There is a pretty big difference between 30% and 42%.
We will check the figures.
I will provide them in writing as well as the figure for the number of students who did not complete third level education. I have no evidence, nor did the Higher Education Authority, HEA, provide me with any, to suggest an increase in the drop-out rate. We will look at the figures for that.
In the context of the cost-of-living pressures that people are facing, which I fully accept are a real issue, it is important that students know we have a student assistance fund, which the Deputy has not acknowledged. It contains more money than ever before. Some €18.5 million is available to students who are struggling to make ends meet or who have been represented with exceptional bills they were not expecting. That is available in addition to the SUSI student grant scheme. Let us be clear: I want to improve the grants and drive down the cost of fees, and I intend to be the first Minister in a long time to do both.
