David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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315. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the estimated cost of restoring higher education grant thresholds to pre-budget 2011 rates; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [24425/18]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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It is not possible to definitively estimate the “cost of restoring higher education grant thresholds to pre-budget 2011 rates”.

To put it in context, in 2010/11 there were 71,532 students who benefitted from grant support at a cost of €355m, whereas in 2016/17 there were 78,904 students in receipt of grant support at a cost of €377m.

In the intervening years, we have centralised the student grant scheme (replacing four separate schemes and sixty six awarding authorities with one scheme administered by a centralised awarding authority), had a complete turnover of students, income levels have changed and numerous changes have been made to the annual schemes which affect eligibility criteria. Furthermore, increasing the income thresholds will attract additional students who currently don’t apply to SUSI. As such, there is no way of accurately predicting the number of additional students who might apply if the income thresholds were increased nor does SUSI hold any income data on these students, which might enable some estimate of the likely cost.

What I can say is that the average cost of a grant in 2016/17 was €4,700. Therefore, each additional qualifying student will, on average cost €4,700.