Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. The SUSI grant review is an extremely important piece of work. It provides us with absolute clarity on the key issues that students and other stakeholders wish to see us address in better supporting students and their families in this country. Even in advance of publishing the review, we had begun to make progress on those recommendations. We introduced a very significant reduction to the distance criteria. That means that many students will qualify for a lot more than an extra €200 in their grant. Some students will actually see their grant rise by over 25% as a result of that change, particularly students, I would suggest, living in rural and provincial Ireland who are travelling long distances to get to college. We have begun to cost the measures of implementing the scheme. I am happy to share that with the Deputy. I am sure the information will be useful for her own work. If we were to go ahead and increase the level of the student grant by 25% from the 2021 maintenance rates, as recommended in the review, the cost would be €43.6 million. I genuinely believe that the findings and recommendations of the student grant scheme review are deliverable. Are all of them deliverable in one year and one budget? They are simply not. However, we can make significant progress in the forthcoming budget. I believe we can get through a lot of those recommendations in the lifetime of this Government, and make a real and substantial difference.

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