Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael)
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As the Deputy will know as a constituency TD, the type of students we are targeting are those who will have come through the SUSI system, people who are socioeconomically disadvantaged. They will obviously have met a set of criteria already to qualify for a grant. We have changed the thresholds this year to make sure we keep the people in it who are already in it and do not have people falling off. Over the last couple of years, we have seen wages, employment levels and opportunities grow. Therefore, we want to use the moneys available to us for student assistance to make sure we kept in the grant system those who were already in it. The choice was to either increase the amount or ensure those who were getting the grant continued to get it. I believed it was more important to keep people in the system and avoid losing them, and the Department agreed with me.

On the 30% threshold, the people currently going through the SUSI system are known to the university system because, in many cases, the universities will have access to that information. They will come through a similar system.