Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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630. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the estimated cost in a first budgetary year of increasing the recurrent funding to the higher education sector by 120, 220, and 320 respectively based on an academic year; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [39361/22]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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My Department allocates recurrent funding to the Higher Education Authority (HEA) for direct disbursement to HEA designated higher education institutions. The HEA allocates this funding to the institutions via the recurrent funding model. The amount provided under my Departments B4 subhead and the National Training Fund (NTF) Enterprise Focused Higher Education provision are included in the overall recurrent grant to the sector.

Recurrent Funding is allocated on an annual basis rather than an academic year basis therefore any increase in the annual grant budget would represent the full year cost of such an increase.

In considering higher education funding it is important to note that public investment in higher education through my Departments allocation is on an upward trend, and now stands at €2.4 billion. Annual current expenditure has increased by 40% since 2015. I am committed to continuing the process of investing in our higher education system and to the development and implementation of a sustainable funding, reform and performance model for the sector. On 4th May I launched the Funding the Future framework which includes the Government's policy response to the Cassells and DG Reform Reviews on the future of higher education.

The policy sets out the vision and direction of higher education funding, our ambitions to drive reform and support agility and responsiveness in the sector, and the need to ensure that students are supported in accessing education and training. This includes:

- Planned additional investment of €307 million to address core funding challenges for our institutions, that will be made over a number of years through annual budgetary processes. This does not account for future demographic needs or new policy proposals for higher education.

- Plans to consider options to address cost as a barrier to higher education, and how we will pursue funding measures on these issues through the Estimates process, including in respect of reductions to the student contribution and enhancements to the SUSI grant in line with the Student Grant Review.

The provision of Higher Education funding on an annual basis is part of overall expenditure management and budgetary policy for Government. It is of course imperative that funding is made available to my Department to support these plans and I will be seeking to have the additional funding required to address the identified core funding gap and also to address costs for students of attending higher education as part of the annual Estimates processes over the coming years.