Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his presentation and for the briefing documents that accompanied it. I will raise five issues, which I will go through as a back-and-forth with the Minister of State rather than asking them all at once. The first relates to page 4 of the briefing. It mentions savings of €48 million, largely due to lower than expected numbers of students utilising the student grant scheme.

That seems like a lot of money to find down the back of a couch. Why does the Department think there was a reduced take-up of that grant scheme?