Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is 10,000. The Scottish thing is a significant change, there is no two ways about it. Before Brexit, as an Irish student, I could head to Scotland and avail of the Scottish free fees initiative. I cannot now. The short answer as to what other supports are available is that I am pleased and grateful to the Scottish Government for allowing access to Irish students to some of its loan support schemes that are available only to its own students. It has opened up access to low interest rate Scottish financing usually available only to Scottish students.

While I certainly do not speak for the Scottish Government, I do know from extensive engagement with it that it wanted to extend this to Ireland. It did not want to change in relation to Ireland, but it got caught out, for want of a better phrase, by the legal advice which gave it no wriggle room in terms of UK domestic equality legislation.

The way we get around this, and I use the phrase loosely, or the way we move forward is through the scholarship scheme. I chatted to the Taoiseach about it. We have a Scottish-Irish partnership in which we try to work together on many areas. There is no reason we should not try to get to a point at which Irish students go to Scotland and avail of scholarships and vice versa. That is the sort of the space I am trying to be in, but-----