Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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1827. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the amount of additional core funding that was allocated in Budget 2024 to the higher education sector. [57014/23]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Investing in further and higher education is an investment in innovation, creativity, and our future and in 2024 over €4.1 billion is being invested in these sectors. This is my Department’s fourth Budget and I’m incredibly proud of the significant progress that has been made so far in creating a sustainable and thriving future for Further and Higher Education. In 2024, Higher Education will see a significant additional increase in core funding of circa €178m which includes capital increases and pay and pension increases arising from building momentum.

This additional investment will allow my Department to:

• Address sustainable funding of higher education as laid out in Funding the Future for increased staffing levels, and strengthened capacity while also enhancing support services for students and greater alignment of provision with priority skills needs;
• Support additional medicine places for Irish/EU students. This initiative is being run in conjunction with the Department of Health.
• For the first time ever, fees for undergraduate part time studies will now be fully funded benefitting eligible one parent families, students with disabilities and carers on low incomes as part of a brand-new pilot programme
• Continue the investment in the student grant scheme with increases applying to maintenance grants, adjacent and non-adjacent rates, effective from January 2024, restoration of maintenance grants to eligible postgraduate students on a similar basis to undergraduates also commencing in January 2024 and increases to the income threshold for Band 4 Maintenance Grant and 100% Student Contribution Grant by 10% applicable from September 2024; and
• Funding to support the National Tertiary Office in expanding the number of joint degree programmes outside the Central Applications Office process;