Finian McGrath (Dublin North Central, Independent)
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To ask the Minister for Education and Skills his views on the fact that farming families receive more educational grants than urban or PAYE families. [56472/12]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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The Higher Education Authority gathers Equal Access information each year from new entrants at undergraduate level on their socio-economic background, disability and ethnicity. The survey however is not mandatory. For the academic year 2011/12 it demonstrates that the proportion of student entrants from farming backgrounds who qualify for a grant is estimated at some 41.8%. This compares with 38.8% for all new entrants. This information has been supplied to my Department by the Higher Education Authority The attached table shows the percentage of new awards made to students in higher education from the different socio economic categories for the academic year 2011/12. It demonstrates how new grant awardees from farming families compare with those from other occupations such as lower professional, non manual, manual skilled, semi skilled and own account workers. 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.