James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Deputy. I am conscious of the cost pressures on students who must pay for student accommodation or those who commute. Some may decide to commute instead and that is equally arduous because of the costs and time associated with that.

The grant scheme recognised this by increasing the amounts available this year for non-adjacent students. In recent times, the non-adjacency distance has also been reduced from 45 km to 30 km. That is a progressive move that will bring more people into the non-adjacent net and they can then receive additional supports as a result. SUSI calculates the distance by measuring the shortest, most direct route from the applicant's normal residence to the higher education institution. It uses Google Maps to do it and uses the time of 1 a.m. The reason it is done at night is that Google Maps, as we know, can direct us through all kinds of weird and wonderful routes, depending on traffic patterns or congestion at different times or accidents. The simplest way to get an as-the-crow-flies reading is to do a 1 a.m. calculation using Google Maps from the home to the college. That is how it is calculated.

That method is universally applied across the board. I appreciate there are always going to be edge cases and hard cases but the method is applied equally and universally on the basis of fairness to all students. I have mentioned the additional increases in the maintenance grants for non-adjacent students and the fact the range was recently reduced to 30 km.

I appreciate this is always going to be a challenge. It is one of the reasons we are pursuing the student accommodation strategy so vigorously. There have also been measures like the student Leap card discounts on public transport in recent years, which I also highly support.

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