Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

191. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if part-time and further education students will receive the same supports as full-time students in the same circumstances; if a hardship fund will be made available; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [29389/18]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The National Plan for Equity of Access to Higher Education 2015-19 contains more than 30 actions that are intended to make higher education more representative of wider society. One of five goals in the plan is to assess the impact of current initiatives to support equity of access in Higher Education Institutions. These include the Fund for Students with Disabilities (FSD) and the Student Assistance Fund (SAF), both of which are managed by the Higher Education Authority (HEA) on behalf of my Department.

The Student Assistance Fund was recently extended to part-time students in higher education following the allocation of an additional €1m in Budget 2017. The current SAF allocation for the 2017/18 academic year is €9.1 million. 

The potential for reviewing other options for existing access funding initiatives to part-time studies in higher education and further education could only be considered in the context of the overall priorities and financial resources for access to higher and further education, and in the wider higher education funding context.