Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Socialist Party)
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50. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection her plans to reintroduce the cost of education allowance for back to education allowance students. [32407/15]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The Back to Education Allowance (BTEA) is designed to support second chance education. It enables social welfare customers in receipt of certain payments to pursue full-time education courses and to continue to receive income support in the form of an allowance. The BTEA is paid for the duration of the course of study, subject to the customer continuing to meet the conditions of the allowance and remaining eligible for a DSP payment. The allowance is paid weekly and replaces the customer’s qualifying payment. In general, most customers will also have certain registration and related college fees paid by SUSI.

The operation of the BTEA has been comprehensively revised over the past two years and I have no plans to further revise the current arrangements. Some €150 million has been provided in 2015 to meet the cost of allowances paid by the Department of Social Protection which represents a considerable investment in supporting some 23,000 customers in the past year to acquire skills to re-enter the labour market.