Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity)
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4. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the assessments that were carried out in relation to the impact the €500 increase in third level fees would have on accessibility to third level; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [56129/25]

Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity)
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I want to ask about the cost of going to college, particularly following the budget. In effect, people are now paying €500 more in third level fees. We have a cost-of-living crisis and this is impacting the ability of students and families to afford these costs.

The poverty rate has actually increased after the budget by all of the metrics the ESRI has used. People are 2% worse off and it is inhibiting people from going to college.

James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Deputy. I welcome the opportunity to make a few remarks on this issue. I hope it is well understood, but I will restate it, that the starting point for this year's budget was that no provision was made for a continual reduction of student fees. There was a once-off measure in last year's budget, which did not carry over to the following year. It was once-off funding that was there during the cost-of-living crisis. It was understandable at times of extreme pressure that this was advanced but I was determined when I came into the Department and was raising my first budget to put measures on a permanent, sustainable costed basis. That was in the Department baseline. That would be repeated year on year and we would avoid the uncertainty and anxiety of students and families every summer wondering if the Government would or would not do this.

With that, I have managed to achieve a €500 permanent reduction in student fees, starting this year. That is accompanied by targeted measures such as increasing maintenance grants at all levels of non-adjacency from the special rate up, increasing the thresholds so that more people than ever before are now eligible for grant support, additional moneys for students with disabilities and into mental health support, and a variety of other new measures targeted to give the most support to those who need it most. We now have a situation where households earning up to €120,000 can benefit from some form of fee support or grant support. Indeed, many students have their fees paid in full already. It is worth saying that under the system, which is a means-tested and progressive system, families with low incomes or those at risk of poverty should not be paying any fees at all. If they are, something has gone wrong. I have invited any individual circumstances to be brought to my attention and we can investigate what might be going on there. Fees are a challenge for middle and higher income families. I absolutely accept that. That is why I have cut fees by €500 this year and raised the threshold to €120,000 so that a family on €119,000 will now have a €500 fee permanent cut and a €500 fee grant, meaning that they are paying €2,000 this year, the same as they did last year.

I will come back to the Deputy with supplementary comments.

Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity)
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We can all do what we will with figures but the reality is that families and students now are paying €500 more than they were for the last two years. That is the reality because of the removal of the once-off measures and when we take into account the increase in costs, in rents in particular. The average cost of going to college in Dublin, for example, increased this year to €20,777 a year, a 3% increase on last year. The main reason is the huge amount of money people have to pay in rent. On average, in Dublin, the rent that students pay is €1,200. It is roughly the same as the minimum wage in a full-time job. Some 83% of student accommodation is in private hands and that is the reason. There is profiteering and profit gouging going on and students are paying the price. A huge number of students have had to take on part-time jobs. Although the grants have increased, the reality is that students who are on SUSI grants are much more likely to drop out of college and not finish their degrees.

James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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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.

Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity)
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The Minister is suggesting he might take away the free third level education with his comment there.

Yes, there are a couple of issues. It is a bad situation when Young Fine Gael was asking for a €1,500 reduction in fees and only a €500 reduction was given. The union of students in Ireland, AMLÉ, asked for a lot more and has expressed huge disappointment at what the Government has done. The dropout rate in college has increased by 15% in two years and 23% for students who are on the lower income levels. As I said, they are much more likely to drop out. The mental health toll on students is incredibly high. The increase in the fees will affect working class families and people on lower incomes more, as the Government has indicated itself. The SUSI grant eligibility will do very little to rectify that. One concrete thing the Government could have done was to maintain that €1,000 increase and it did not do it.

James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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For clarity, I am absolutely not talking about bringing in extra fees. Fees will only go down on my watch. To be crystal clear, fees will go in one direction, and that is down, as long as I am in office. However, it is important to discuss the academic work and the research that has been done. That is what the Deputy asked about in her question. She asked what assessments had been carried out. I put an assessment before her. She does not like it. That is fine but she cannot ask the question and then not like the answer. If she has access to other research or assessments, I would welcome it if she wanted to share them with me. I will take them on board. There is a dearth of assessment on this issue and a very limited set of publications. Those that do exist would suggest that targeted measures are preferable to universal measures in getting money to people who need it most, namely, the low income families and the working class families the Deputy mentioned. If we were to do more on fees this year, in the scope of a limiting pot of money and a limited pool of resources, we could not have done other things. Is the Deputy suggesting I should not have not increased maintenance grants and thresholds, should not have put money into students with disabilities and student supports and instead did a bit more on fees for higher and middle income earners? I am not sure if that is her position. If it is, I would be interested in hearing about it.

I believe we have tried to do both. It is what we call progressive universalism, which people like Gordon Brown have espoused. I subscribe to it myself. We tried to do both. We have a twin track whereby we have given universal supports to everybody but we then layer that on top of targeted measures that activate people who would not otherwise access education.