James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)

To summarise, grants have increased, thresholds have increased, student supports have increased and student fees have come permanently down. That is progress. This is the first budget of a term. I repeat that low-income families and households at risk of poverty should not be paying fees at all. While I absolutely understand that fees are an issue for the squeezed middle, those households at risk of poverty to which the Deputy refers should not be paying fees at all. That is another reason we have continued to raise the thresholds and, indeed, to pay fees.

The Deputy asked in her written question what assessment was carried out. That is a question I also asked earlier this year and I have commissioned a piece of research. It is really important that we understand the impact of interventions. There is very little research in this area but there is a very useful paper by an academic by Kevin Denny in the department of economics at the UCD Geary Institute for Public Policy. It sets out the impact of the free fees initiative and what it means and how it helps. Ultimately it concludes, unfortunately, that if the goal was to lift more people out of poverty and provide educational equality, it did not do that. It actually gave an additional bonus to the middle classes by allowing them to spend money on grinds and private schools etc. instead. There is a policy discussion around that and I have commissioned a piece of research on that, which I will share and publish when it is received.

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