Derek Nolan (Galway West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Ceann Comhairle's office for selecting this Topical Issue. Some tens of thousands of students are returning to college after the summer break and re-entering the Student Universal Support Ireland, SUSI, system to access supports for education such as having their fees paid and receiving maintenance grants. While SUSI has improved since its first year in operation, there are still difficulties with the rules by which it must operate, in particular, the eligibility criteria by which students are identified as independent, meaning they are judged on their means, rather than on those of their parents, the alternative being dependent status. This is an issue particularly for students entering postgraduate courses who must fulfil one of two requirements, namely, that the applicant must be over 23 years of age when he or she enters third level education, or must have a gap of three years in his or her education path between finishing his or her undergraduate degree and proceeding to postgraduate study. This has led to some very unusual, peculiar and undesirable outcomes. For example, a student who visited me in my constituency office in Galway last week is in her second year of PhD studies.

She had entered the third level education system at 19 years of age, which means that she fails the first criterion for independent status. She is now 27 years old and in the second year of a PhD programme, but because there was only a two-year gap between her masters programme and the PhD programme, she is now being deemed as dependent on her parents, notwithstanding that she has not lived at home with them for years. She is financing her way through college as much as she can through part-time work, but the requirements we have in place say this grown woman must be judged on her parents' income. It is an unfortunate aspect of the system. It tells people not to go back to college but rather to keep the gap as great as possible in order to get maintenance. It encourages people not to continue in education but to stay out of it for longer. It is an unfortunate element of the policy. We need people to upskill, and these postgraduate courses are what we mean when we refer to the knowledge economy and our ability to compete internationally in terms of education, skills and being at the forefront of research. Rather than encouraging that, the policy disincentivises it. I ask the Minister of State, who has an interest in this, to give a commitment today to discuss the matter with the Minister, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, to see if we really want a system that is a disincentive for people to stay in education.

See this speech in context