Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)

Most families try, when their kids enter education, to budget for it over a number of years. However, having established that budget, many families now unfortunately are being obliged to pull their children out of education. In the case of one family with which I am familiar, it was a question of which child would be taken out of education. I refer to the pledge that was made and while I do not put it on the record of the House to embarrass anyone, does the Minister not accept the difficulty facing many students is that they and their families are in a worse position financially this year than was the case last year when the pledge was made? This is the great difficulty faced by such students, many of whom now face being obliged to withdraw from education. Moreover, the difficulty for many families will be to decide which son or daughter will be pulled out of education.

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