Ms Marian Duggan:

I am conscious that when we bring in students they bring in their whole person. The focus of what we are talking about here is reforming the SUSI grant, and that will help students from the perspective of dealing with some of the financial difficulties they experience in accessing higher education. In coming to higher education and bringing their whole selves, we must recognise that they need support, especially if they are away from home, whether that means they are away from their home region or home country. We have had a system whereby once-off extra funding may have been provided, for example, in the form of student assistance funds. We have also had mental health and well-being funds. That funding has been once-off, though, and we need more multi-year funding to allow us to help students to continue to participate in and graduate from third level education.