Maureen O'Sullivan (Dublin Central, Independent)
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143. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the estimated cost of increasing the non-adjacent maintenance grant to €4,025 for full-time students at undergraduate and postgraduate level. [19646/18]

Maureen O'Sullivan (Dublin Central, Independent)
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144. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the estimated cost of increasing the adjacent maintenance grant of €2,215 for full-time students at undergraduate and postgraduate level. [19647/18]

Maureen O'Sullivan (Dublin Central, Independent)
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145. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the estimated cost of extending a non-adjacent maintenance grant of €4,025 to part-time students at undergraduate and postgraduate level. [19648/18]

Maureen O'Sullivan (Dublin Central, Independent)
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146. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the estimated cost of extending an adjacent maintenance grant of €2,215 to part-time students at undergraduate and postgraduate level. [19649/18]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 143 to 146, inclusive, together.

The current standard rate of full maintenance grant (non-adjacent rate) is €3,025. For the academic year 2016/17 there were 19,440 undergraduate and postgraduate students who qualified for this grant rate. If the grant was increased by €1,000 and a similar number of students qualified, the cost would be €19,440,000.

The current standard rate of full maintenance grant (adjacent rate) is €1,215. For the academic year 2016/17 there were 16,759 undergraduate and postgraduate students who qualified for this grant rate. If the grant was increased by €1,000 and a similar number of students qualified, the cost would be €16,759,000.

Students on part-time courses are not eligible for SUSI grants. As such, my Department has no means tested statistical data available to determine the number of part-time students who might qualify for student grants. The latest statistics from the HEA for the number of part-time students in publicly funded institutions, record a total of 21,988 undergraduate students and 15,645 postgraduate students. If the full maintenance grant (both adjacent and non-adjacent) were extended to part-time students, then the cost would be €4,025 or €2,215 per qualifying student.

Approximately 20% of full-time students qualify for the full maintenance grant with circa 54% on the non-adjacent rate and circa 46% on the adjacent rate. Applying these percentages to the number of part-time students would indicate that circa 4,065 students would qualify for the non-adjacent rate of maintenance grant at a cost of €16,361,625 and 3,462 students would qualify for the adjacent rate of maintenance grant at a cost of €7,668,330. However, it should be noted that qualifying full-time students also receive a fee grant of up to €6,270. If this was provided to part-time students then it could potentially add a further €47,194,290 to the costings.