Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 19 October 2023
83. Deputy Colm Burke asked the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science to confirm the number of students that will benefit from measures aimed at those in further and higher education in budget 2024; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [45740/23]
View answerWill the Minister confirm the number of students that will benefit from measures in budget 2024 aimed at those in further and higher education, particularly in the area of apprenticeships?
Budget 2024 introduced what is, by any fair and objective measure, a significant package of supports for third level students and their families. I will take each measure in turn.
It is estimated that 94,000 students will benefit from the €1,000 reduction in the student contribution fee. Almost 52,000 students will benefit from the student grant increases. A total of 1,790 postgraduate students will benefit from the reintroduction in postgraduate supports. Some 24,000 students are expected to benefit from the removal of the PLC fees. Some 11,000 apprentices in higher education will benefit from the one third reduction in the apprenticeship student contribution fee. Furthermore, 3,000 PhD researchers will benefit from a €3,000 increase to the PhD stipends provided by Science Foundation Ireland and the Irish Research Council.
To put that in context, contrary to the air of negativity sometimes surrounding the issue, more than 185,000 students and their families will receive support as a result of budget 2024. They will have real money in their pockets and a real reduction in their bills and in the cost of education as a result of our budget. That includes targeting supports to those who are most in need through the student grant scheme and it also includes universal support, recognising that everybody needs a bit of help, including those who may not qualify for student grants.
We are also doing more. We are increasing the student assistance fund, which will benefit all students in need of supports. This brings the allocation for this academic year to more €17.6 million.
I am most excited about the fact that from September, we will have a new part-time fees scheme. For the very first time, we will have fee support for part-time students, including those studying online. Let us take a hypothetical mother raising two kids on her own, holding down a job and trying to pay a mortgage or pay the rent who has always wanted to go to college but is only able to do it part-time and has been hit with a wall of large fees, now if her household income is below €56,000 per year, she will have those fees paid for by the Government. These are some of the measures we have put in place.
There is a substantial amount available to increase the number of apprenticeships in various areas. The Minister now needs to look at increasing the number of places in our third level institutions for key areas such as healthcare and others. Taking dentistry as an example, in some colleges up to 50% of the places are taken by students from abroad because the colleges are trying to get money in. How can the number of places in universities be increased rather than them being reliant on students coming from abroad to make up the cost of running particular faculties? This applies in to radiotherapy, medicine, nursing and other areas that need to be expanded. I remind the Minister that the population has increased by 1.5 million or 40%, and therefore, the number of the training places in each of these areas needs to increase by 40% as well.
I could not agree more. That is exactly what we are trying to do. Yes, we need to increase the size of the tertiary education system and we are doing so year-on-year. However, we also need to increase it specifically in areas where we know there is one of two things - a need for more people to work in that area from a public services point of view or a demand for more students to study in the area that is not being currently met. Throughout 2023 we have done a number of exercises in respect of healthcare and veterinary medicine where we have asked the education system what more it can do on nursing, medicine, therapy places and dentistry.
We are working with the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform and the line Minister, the Minister for Health, to see how we can fund that in the context of the NDP capital review. Next year we will do further work on other key areas. We will also work to ensure all institutions on the island of Ireland are helping to contribute to the skills needs of our island. That is why we now have ring-fenced a number of healthcare places in Queens University and the University of Ulster.
Is there enough joined-up thinking between education and placement in workplaces? As with getting apprentices the required training, people doing degree or diploma courses need to get placement in the workplace at the same time as studying and as part of an overall package, rather than it just being purely academic or purely focused on the college itself.
I am glad the Deputy raised that because that is what the review has done. People often ask me to create another college place in X area. For some courses that is relatively easy to do. However, in a course with a clinical or work placement element, there is no ability to create the place without the matching work place. We have worked jointly with the Department of Health. We have identified what we can do from a university point of view and asked the Department of Health to identify the work placements. We have married the two and now we are progressing it. This is not all an exercise for the future. We have increased the number of medicine places by 60 last year and a further 60 this year. We have several hundred more nursing places and more therapy places, including in the North. We are actively on this journey. We want to make more progress on veterinary medicine. The Deputy has raised radiation therapy with me regularly and I will follow up directly with him on that.
