Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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247. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of third level students from a farming background who qualified for a student maintenance grant in each of the past five years. [32529/14]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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Following the introduction by SUSI of a universal online application process in 2012, 99% of new grant applicants made their grant applications using an online application form in place of the former paper form. The online form included optional questions regarding the previous occupation of the student applicant and the current occupation of any parent, spouse, cohabitant or civil partner associated with the application. These questions are included for statistical purposes only and are not required as part of the grant eligibility assessment process.

In the 2012-13 academic year 1,695 (8% of new awards) new third level grant applicants to SUSI received a maintenance grant and where they indicated in their application form that either their own occupation or that of a parent, spouse, cohabitant or civil partner associated with the application was either "agricultural worker" or "farmer". In the 2013-14 academic year, the figure was 1,672 (8% of new awards).

It is understood from SUSI that some 6,000 applicants who were awarded a maintenance grant in those years either did not indicate an occupation or indicated that they were in gainful employment without specifying their occupation. Therefore, it is likely that this figure will also contain some students from a farming background.

The following table shows the percentage of new awards made by local authorities and VECS (which may include maintenance and/or fees) made to students in higher education from farming backgrounds for the five academic years 2009/10 to 2011/12. This indiciative 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.

PQ 32529/14 for 17th July - % of New Awards who indicated a farming or agricultural worker background

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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248. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of third level students who qualified for a student maintenance grant in each of the past five years. [32530/14]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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The following table shows the number of students in higher education courses who qualified for a grant (which may include a maintenance grant and/or a fee grant) for the five academic years 2008/09 to 2012/13. The figures do not include those students in receipt of a student grant in further education courses.

PQ 32530/14 for 17th July 2014 - Higher Education grantholders