Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It was great to be back in the west and able to meet people in real life rather than on Zoom. I thank Senator Dolan for her work in highlighting the SUSI review. I can tell her that we received over 250 submissions via the public consultation process from a wide range of organisations, many of which work with students, parents, vulnerable people and people at risk of poverty, with ideas about how we could improve the scheme. We also received over 9,000 survey responses, which is a very significant number. The steering group, which has student and university representatives on it along with representatives from the Department of Social Protection and my Department, is working its way through those. It is expected that the review will be completed this autumn and will inform our policy priorities for the Estimates process.

Senator Dolan referred to laptops and the free laptops scheme we ran last year, which worked very well. I, and I am sure, many colleagues have met many students who benefited from the laptops scheme in third level education. I expect to be in a position to make a further announcement next week on a new scheme for additional free laptops. The Minister of State and I will have details on that next week.

I will ask the Minister of State, who is leading for us on the apprenticeship scheme, to respond on the apprenticeship action plan and the Senator's questions. UniCoV is working really well. I thank Professor Breda Smith, the public health lead for the mid-west, who is leading the charge on that. Students can now go to the dedicated website where they can register if they are in Trinity College, UCD, NUI Galway or UCC. I am delighted that five more sites are in place, including one in the Senator's region.

Regarding researchers, we provided significant additional funding to help with research extensions. If this is required again, we will certainly provide it. This is a very pure Covid cost and the Government needs to meet what are legitimate Covid costs. Delays in research are not the fault of the researcher or institution; they are the fault of Covid. We have worked very closely with the research community to address any required extensions and will continue to do so.