Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of persons currently in receipt of a student maintenance grant at third level. [45550/12]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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The Deputy will appreciate that the number of awards for the 2012/13 academic year is not yet available and will not be supplied to my Department by the grant awarding authorities until later in the academic year. However, I wish to advise that some 67,650 third level students qualified for a student grant in the 2011/12 academic year.

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of persons from a farming background currently in receipt of a student maintenance grant. [45552/12]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of persons from a self employed background currently in receipt of a student maintenance grant. [45553/12]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 127 and 128 together.
The table following shows the number of new awards made to students in higher education from the different socio-economic categories including farming and self employed for the academic year 2011/2012. This indicative data is subject to considerable qualification for interpretation purposes in relation to the reliability due to, inter alia, the level of undeclared status among the returns from the awarding authorities and the provision of accurate and or/adequate information in respect of occupation by the principal earner to enable the awarding authorities to classify them by socio-economic background. The information contained in the table has been supplied to my Department by the awarding authorities who submitted a return.