Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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188. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if a change of strategy in respect of back to education allowance eligibility criteria has been deployed in respect of applications for 2020; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [22732/20]

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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189. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the number of applications in respect of the back to education allowance that have been refused to date in 2020; the level of qualification they are under; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [22734/20]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 188 and 189 together.

The back to education allowance (BTEA) provides income support for jobseekers and certain others in receipt of social welfare payments who pursue courses of education at second or third level. The main focus of the BTEA is to assist qualifying applicants to improve their educational qualifications and improve their prospects of gaining employment.

Ordinarily a person must be in receipt of a qualifying social welfare payment for at least nine months before being eligible to apply for the BTEA when pursuing a 3rd level qualification. As announced as part of the July Stimulus, this nine month condition is being waived for recipients of the pandemic unemployment payment wishing to return to education. Someone in receipt of the pandemic unemployment payment is required to transfer their claim to a jobseekers payment to access the BTEA.

The conditions under which the BTEA operate are designed to ensure that they address the objective of supporting longer term social welfare customers into employment. The Student Universal Support Ireland (SUSI) grant payable by the Department of Further and Higher Education represents the primary support for persons pursuing education.

Applications for the 2020/21 academic year are currently being processed by my Department. There are no statistics available on the number of BTEA claims that have been disallowed. If there is a particular case that the Deputy has a concern about, then my officials would be happy to examine it.

I trust this clarifies the matter.