Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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1288. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the estimated amount that has been distributed through the student assistance fund over the past twelve months to support students with placement costs. [18671/21]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The Student Assistance Fund (SAF) provides financial support to full- and part-time students who are experiencing financial difficulties while attending higher education. Under the Fund, financial support can be provided to assist students who are unable to meet costs associated with day-to-day participation in higher education, including a number of categories such as books and other class material, rent, heating and lighting bills and other utility bills, essential travel, childcare costs etc. The information requested by the Deputy is not available.

In response to the Covid19 pandemic, the SAF allocation for the 2020/21 academic year was doubled from €8.1 million to €16.2 million. Since 2017, an additional €1 million per year has been allocated to the SAF with HEIs asked to prioritise and ring-fence this element of funding for the support of part-time students who are lone parents or members of the other access target groups identified in the National Plan for Equity of Access to Higher Education.

An additional €1 million was added to the fund in 2018 for students attending Professional Masters of Education (PME) courses, who are experiencing financial difficulty. This additional funding was also made available for the 2019/20 year and again in 2020/21.

This brings the total SAF allocation in 2020/21 to €18.2 million.