Erin McGreehan (Louth, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the students here this evening. I know how important it is to have student support when going to college. I went to a tech and got a grant to go to college. I would not have been able to do it otherwise. I worked throughout college. I know how important it is to have supports to be able to succeed in college and do what you want to do and what is in you. Let us be clear: Fianna Fáil is the party of education. From Donogh O’Malley's introduction of free secondary school education to today's SUSI reforms, our record speaks louder than any slogans. Over the past three years we have increased the SUSI maintenance grants to historic highs, restored postgraduate supports and raised the SUSI income threshold to €115,000, benefiting thousands of middle-income families.

Some 40% of students in the country receive a student grant. I want to see that increase. So does the Minister and so does this Government. I want to see the cost reduced. Yet, Sinn Féin returns here every year with the same uncosted motion, tabled in 2023, ignoring that student fees are rightly made in an annual budget. It is simply disingenuous.

Let us set out some of the facts. Promises were made by Fine Gael, not by Fianna Fáil, during the election when it had this brief. I will also lay out some other facts for our Government partners. This budget in this year was prepared not by the Minister, Deputy James Lawless, but by his Fine Gael predecessor. However, the Minister has been diligently addressing the reality inherited from the Tánaiste and the Minister, Deputy O'Donovan, and has acted in good faith without resorting to press releases designed solely to grab headlines. What really matters here is not politics; it is the students. While we debate here, there is a cohort of families and students across the country from ordinary hardworking households who I am focused on supporting, for example, families with two or three children in college earning just above the grant thresholds, and they are under incredible, enormous strain. The Minister knows this and the Government knows this.

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