Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Sinn Fein)
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87. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the reason mature students who are studying blended learning courses will be ineligible to receive the €1,000 reduction in fees announced in budget 2023; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [51632/22]

Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Sinn Fein)
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I wish to raise a matter raised with me by Deborah, a constituent of mine. My question relates to the welcome recent measures for students that were introduced in budget 2023. Why will mature students who are juggling work and engaged in blended learning courses be ineligible to receive the €1,000 reduction in fees? Does the Department plan to remedy that in any way?

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy for raising this matter on behalf of her constituent. As she is aware, as part of the budget 2023 we have secured a significant cost-of-living package for third level students, including a once-off €1,000 state financial support towards the undergraduate student contribution fee for higher education students eligible for the free fees scheme. This measure will reduce the student contribution payable by students from €3,000 to €2,000 in the current academic year. The measure applies to all students eligible for free fees, including mature students. This additional level of support towards the student contribution will benefit approximately 94,000 or 95,000 additional students.

The student contribution is paid in respect of programmes covered by my Department’s free fees scheme. At present, part-time or blended courses are not eligible for inclusion in this scheme and students attending such courses pay a tuition fee. In short, this is not an issue relating to mature students as compared with non-mature students, if that is the right phrase. The issue here is the linkage with the €3,000 fee. The decision we took in the budget was to reduce the €3,000 fee on a once-off basis by €1,000, to €2,000. Regardless of whether one is a mature student, if one is paying or required to pay the €3,000 fee, that is reduced to €2,000.

I concede the point that there are a number of other students who pay different fees or are involved in different ways of doing college, including part-time learning, blended learning and the likes, in respect of which they are not eligible for the €3,000 fee and, therefore, do not benefit from the €1,000 reduction. However, in an effort to be helpful to the Deputy's constituent, I point out that we have increased the allocation in the student assistance fund for the current academic year. The fund provides financial support to students experiencing financial difficulties while attending college and can provide assistance towards rent, childcare costs, transport costs and books and class materials. The fund is open to full- or part-time registered students on courses of not less than one year's duration leading to an undergraduate or postgraduate qualification. Application to the fund can be made through the access office in a student’s third level institution. I know it is not the ideal answer the Deputy would like, but I hope the information I have provided is helpful.

Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Sinn Fein)
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10 o’clock

I thank the Minister for his response. It is important to note that, under the SAF, tuition fees, registration fees, and student loan repayments are not covered. Some colleges have a closing date for those applications. Nelson Mandela once said that education is the most powerful weapon that one can use to change the world, and according to the Central Statistics Office, CSO, it reported last year that more than three in ten people said that they would like to return to education. Of these, 74% said they would be more likely to choose a course through blended or remote learning and, for those in employment, that figure was 76%.

Part-time students have many and varied reasons for not being able to study full time, such as raising families, providing full-time care, actively participating in the workforce and ultimately paying back into the State. Covid-19 brought with it many challenges, but one opportunity it gave us was to develop further practices and policies to make remote or blended learning and working part of our lives. These opportunities should not be disregarded. These students pay a full-time contribution, they complete exactly the same amount of work and the same hours on placement, and after four years, their qualification is the same as that of a full-time student.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I find myself fundamentally in agreement with the Deputy. To be blunt and honest here, we had to start somewhere and we started at the €3,000 fee. Any student linked to the €3,000 undergraduate fee benefits from the €1,000 reduction. Do we want to do more? Yes. Do we need to do more in respect of part-time students? We absolutely do for the reasons the Deputy has said. There are many people in society with a variety of backgrounds who will either need to access education in a part-time or blended way or it will suit them better to do so.

At the moment there is a policy contradiction in place. We encourage people to access part-time education but then they cannot access, for example, the Student Universal Support Ireland, SUSI, student fees. We have an immediate body of work underway as part of our Funding the Future implementation group, where Professor Tom Collins is looking specifically at the criteria and rules that could be arranged for part-time students in accessing SUSI, for example. That could be a potential game changer for many part-time students in Ireland. It will be a priority body of work for me and my Department in 2023 to try to make progress on that in advance of the next budget.

Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Minister again for his response. I appreciate all of the information he has outlined. In the past week the Union of Students in Ireland led 20,000 students on campuses across Ireland to walk out of lectures in protest. Findings this week from the Irish student survey of engagement found that more than one third of students are contemplating dropping out. We can fairly easily assume that, in addition to mental health and the cost of living, the student accommodation crisis is playing a major part in this. The current national student accommodation strategy is now seven years out of date and the path forward is unclear. The Minister has committed to scrapping and replacing this strategy, but we saw no funding provided in budget 2023. Will the Minister commit to scrapping this outdated strategy and producing a credible successor to it with the needs and concerns of students and their representatives at heart?

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Yes, I can, and it will be replaced in 2023. The first priority, and it has to be my first one, is to get building student accommodation. There are a number of sites and universities that have planning permission and land today and I need to get those projects built. It has not been possible to build them, and I do not mean to say this in a critical way of them, for whatever one may want to call it, be it market failure or lack of viability. We need to make a State intervention to get these projects moving. I intend to bring proposals to the Cabinet committee this month to make progress on that.

Once we get that over the way, I believe it will be right we then replace the student accommodation strategy with one that is up to date because a great deal has changed in the world, in housing and everything else, since the previous strategy was put in place. The Deputy can expect a new student accommodation strategy in 2023, but rather than having officials writing new strategies, the first thing I want to do is to try to get what are potentially several thousand units underway and moving in respect of universities which already have planning permission.