Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On behalf of the Government, I welcome the opportunity to respond to what has been a very insightful and informative debate on the important issue of the cost of education. The Government is acutely aware that many Irish families feel additional financial pressure each year when they are preparing to send their children back to school or college. It is important that the Government continues to support families with the cost of education.

As my Government colleagues said, it is crucially important that all children and young people are supported to access education to its fullest forms. The education system must value every child and young person and support and nurture them to reach their full potential.

My colleague, the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, highlighted the importance of the groundbreaking free schoolbooks scheme for primary and special schools which will be in place from the start of the new school year. Over €52 million in Government funding to support the implementation of the scheme has issued to schools already. All children and young people in our primary and special schools will now arrive into school on 1 September having the required schoolbooks, workbooks and copy books. The scheme has removed the requirement for families to purchase these items or make a financial contribution to a school towards the book rental scheme.

The DEIS programme, first introduced in 2005, is the main policy initiative of the Government to address educational disadvantage at school level. In March 2022, an expansion of the DEIS programme was announced which provided for the inclusion of 322 additional schools in the programme from September 2022. This means the DEIS programme now supports 240,000 students in over 1,200 schools, 967 which are primary schools and 235 of which are post primary. The Department of Education will spend in the region of €180 million in 2023 to provide supports to DEIS schools. These schools receive an additional grant each year to support the implementation of their DEIS action plan for improvement.

The school meals programme administered by the Department of Social Protection is vital, particularly in DEIS schools. The programme currently provides funding towards the provision of food services for some 1,600 schools and organisations and benefits 260,000 children. It enables the provision of regular, nutritious food to children and young people to support them in taking full advantage of the education provided to them. It greatly assists many families by eliminating the financial pressures they may face to provide a breakfast or a lunch each day and it is very important that when children come to school, they have a good nutritious meal to help them with their education during the course of the day. The Government provided €94.4 million for this programme in budget 2023. In addition, the Government recently approved an additional €14.5 million to allow access to the hot school meals scheme for all remaining DEIS schools and special schools from September 2023, benefiting more than 60,000 children and young people. As part of the significant plans to extend the hot school meals scheme to all children in the coming years, the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, intends commencing the roll-out to all remaining primary schools on a phased basis commencing in 2024. This has been raised by a number of Deputies and I am sure they will acknowledge that this is breaking ground. There is a tremendous plan in place to achieve this.

The Minister referenced significant additional capitation payments of approximately €90 million that were issued to schools at the end of 2022. Capitation payments to schools are important in order that the schools have the necessary funding in place to cover the day-to-day running costs, such as electricity and heat. Within the available funding envelope, the Government will seek to further increase the capitation rates paid to schools in future years. Transport costs to and from school are an important issue for many families, especially those living in rural areas who may have to make travel arrangements and travel significant distances in the course of the school week. For the coming school year, the Government has decided the annual charge for a primary school child will be €50 and for a post-primary student will be €75, with a maximum cap per family of €125. This is a substantial reduction on the previous annual charges and shows again the Government's commitment to reducing the cost of accessing education for families. Eligible children holding valid medical cards and children with special educational needs remain exempt from the school transport charges.

It is also important to mention the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance provided by the Government through the Department of Social Protection. The back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance provides a once-off payment to eligible families towards the cost of school clothing and footwear. The rates of payment for the academic year 2023-24 have been increased by €100 per child to €260 for children aged four to 11, and €385 for children aged 12 years and over who are in post-primary education. The majority of payments will be made automatically with no application form required. The back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance will be paid automatically to more than 120,000 families in respect of approximately 210,000 children during the week beginning on 10 July. Last week, I was very pleased as a Deputy in Laois to meet so many parents throughout County Laois and in Portlaoise who came up to me on the street and said they were very grateful to have already directly received the funding without even having to apply for it because the system worked on a renewal basis from last year. That funding was received by thousands of families in recent days and I will say to people who have not yet received it or applied for it, especially for new students, that the closing date for applications is 30 September 2023 and they should apply as soon as possible if they have not done so.

At third level, the Minister, Deputy Harris, has taken a number of steps to reduce the cost of third level education. Budget 2023 saw a significant reduction in the cost of college for third level students and their families and this included supports for the cost of living such as the reduction by €1,000 in the student contribution for free fees for eligible undergraduate students for the academic year 2023-24. In addition, all student maintenance grant recipients received an extra payment in December last year. Moreover, students in receipt of the postgraduate fee contribution received a once-off payment of €1,000, increasing their support from €3,500 to €4,500. In addition, more than €20 million has been provided to the student assistance fund for the 2022-23 academic year and a once-off payment of €500 was provided in 2022 for PhD students who receive Irish Research Council, IRC, or Science Foundation Ireland, SFI, awards. Moreover, €30 million was provided in funding to increase capacity for apprenticeships in 2023 and additional funding for social inclusion measures in apprenticeships such as bursaries for apprentices from underrepresented groups. In addition, approximately 48,000 students benefited from grant increases of between 10% and 14% effective from January 2023.

A further range of improvements to the student grant, as announced in budget 2023, will take effect for the coming academic year 2023-24 and this includes the creation of a new student support contribution grant of €500 for incomes of between €62,000 and €100,000 in the SUSI grant scheme. The issue of the grant scheme was mentioned by a lot of people in the debate and it is good that families who were finding it difficult to meet those costs will be able to have some support, especially where more than one member of the family is at third level. The income threshold for the 50% student contribution grant has been increased from €55,240 to €62,000. Again this will facilitate many families, rather than have their family members being unable to go forward to third level education. There was a €500 increase in the stipend baseline for 2023 for PhD students who receive an IRC or SFI award and a change in the eligibility criteria for second-chance mature students, as defined in the student grant scheme, that reduced the period for a full break in studies from five to three years, which was a very significant issue as well. Increasing the deduction allowable for student earnings outside term time from €4,500 to €6,552 is very important. Most of us, as Deputies, have run into that issue where students who were earning money felt they were being penalised for working to get to college and then their grant was being reduced. That is a significant increase, allowing them to earn an extra amount of more than €2,000 without their grant being affected. Exclusion from the rental income of up to €14,000 being declared to the Revenue Commissioners under the Government's rent-a-room relief scheme is also important. There is a greater degree of flexibility for students who may have long-term social welfare payments but who are falling outside the special rate. On 25 May, the Minister, Deputy Harris was delighted to open the first stakeholder event to inform development of the Department's options paper. In general, this is the first Government, and I do not think there is another Government in the world, where out of 14 Government Ministers plus the Taoiseach, that two of the Ministries, which is one in seven of the Government Ministers, are solely and totally dedicated to education. To have two Government Ministers solely dedicated to education is a sign of the commitment the Government has to the education of our young people for decades to come.

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