The Tánaiste and Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Coughlan, and her predecessor, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, continue to insist that the student service charge does not represent the total allocation towards student services from institutions' budgets. This probably is because the Government is diverting such funding away from student services. When the student service charge was increased to €670 in 2002, the colleges only pocketed approximately 6% of that increase and the remainder went towards the reduction of the core grant from the then Department of Education and Science. In other words, the student service charge went to defray and reduce funding from the central budget.

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