Batt O'Keeffe (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)

The student services charge is levied by third level institutions to defray the costs of examinations, registration and student services. The range of services may include such facilities as on-campus medical and counselling facilities for students, access and disability services, careers office services, student facilities, student clubs and societies. It should be noted all students who are eligible for means-tested grants have the charge paid on their behalf by the local authorities or vocational education committees.

As already announced, the Government indicated it was prepared to accept increases in the level of this charge for the academic year 2009-2010 to bring it to a limit of €1,500 in individual higher education institutions. In the previous academic year, the charge stood at €900. The increase in the charge for the 2009-2010 academic year enabled individual institutions to bring the amount contributed by students more into line with the real cost of providing student services in those institutions. This was agreed on the understanding that the revenue generated by the increase adopted by each institution would reflect their requirements in defraying the full cost of items that fall to be funded by the charge.

Where income from the charge did not previously meet the full cost of these services, this required an effective cross-subsidisation by institutions from their general block grant funding. The overall block grant allocations made to institutions for 2010 took account of the anticipated additional revenue available to institutions from an increase in the charge.

Systems of local accountability to students are in place across higher education institutions for the use of resources generated by the charge. The Higher Education Authority has issued a framework of good practice for the provision of student services to the publicly funded higher education institutions. It consists of guidelines to establish an appropriate system of consultation with students in the allocation of funding from the charge and in the determination of student services to be funded from this source with particular emphasis on principles of transparency and accountability.

The authority has written to all institutions on several occasions to ensure correct procedures are in place and to remind them of their function with the student services charge, in accordance with the framework of good practice. I have asked the authority to ensure all institutions are using the full income from the charge for the purpose for which it is intended.

See this speech in context