Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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459. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if she will review the rules around transitional courses at third level for the purposes of supports under the Student Universal Support Ireland scheme, given the lack of recognition that add-on courses with high progression rates currently have. [26901/15]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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The objective of the student grant scheme is to help as many students as possible to obtain one qualification at each level of study.

To satisfy the terms and conditions of the student grant scheme in relation to progression, a student must be moving from year to year within a course, having successfully completed the previous year or be transferring from one course to another where the award for the subsequent course is of a higher level than the previous course.

Course articulation or credit transfer arrangements can lead to admission in some cases directly onto the second or subsequent year of a higher level course, reducing the overall time required to achieve a qualification. The Student Support Regulations has provision for add-on courses e.g. a student having completed a level 7 on the NQF may have the option of doing an additional year to obtain a level 8 degree.