Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will do that. Deputy Griffin is entirely right; if you go into a café, hotel, pub or shop, people will tell you it can be hard to attract staff. There are many students who are working, who need to work and who want to work but they are worried that if they work too many hours, they might go over the threshold and lose their student grants. The good news is that progress has been made on this with the holiday earnings deduction, as it is called. The amount of income you can earn and have disregarded has increased from €4,500 in 2022 and 2023 to €6,552 currently and I intend to try to make more progress on that in the budgets ahead.

More generally, we have made improvements to the income thresholds, although I accept we have more to do. For example, the reckonable income threshold for a student contribution grant has increased from €62,000 to €100,000. If you have a household income of €100,000 or less, you are eligible for some support in respect of fee reduction. From this September, for the new college year, the income thresholds for students to receive a maintenance grant is increasing to €50,840, up from €46,790, and we will endeavour to build on this.

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