Rose Conway-Walsh presses minister on SUSIE, grants and living costs

Minister, students like many others in this state are struggling to get by due to the cost of living. Between fees, rent, transport, students are finding it really hard to make ends meet. Many of them have been in contact with my office after hearing announcements or reading headlines that state that more funding has been made available. Could you clearly lay out the increases in expenditure from the last academic year to this one in the areas of SUSIE, the Student Assistance Fund, and mental health supports? Goera Maga. Goera Maga. Thank you to Deputy Conway-Walsh for the question. Obviously the support and wellbeing of students is a major priority for me, it's a major priority for my department and I know it's a major priority for all members of this House and we have endeavoured to reflect that priority in significant steps to increase funding for this purpose. I, like the Deputy, am very conscious of the pressure on students including those arising from the COVID pandemic but as well as the general increased cost of living. As I will outline, I have secured significant funding to support the student population this year for students in financial difficulty as well as those for students who require mental health supports, disability supports or assistance for items such as laptops. In fact, my department will spend over €400 million on student support in 2021 including the student grant scheme which assists approximately 74,000 students annually to access third level education. This includes the implementation of measures I introduced in last year's budget to provide greater support to post-graduates in the SUSIE scheme from the current academic year onwards. I have also secured a comprehensive package of financial supports for the higher education and further education and training sectors to mitigate the impact of COVID in the current academic year. Directly to the Deputy's question, funding of €3 million to underpin mental health and student services in our higher education institutions was secured. This is in addition to the €2 million that had been allocated in the budget. An additional €20 million was provided for the SUSIE student grant scheme to negate against the impact of COVID-19 through increased levels of demand. I have doubled the student assistance fund over the last two years to ensure students have support if they fall on hard times. This will provide €17.2 million for financial assistance to students experiencing financial difficulties while attending higher education. That figure was €8 million when I took office less than two years ago. A specific provision has also been made in the student assistance fund for part-time students who are lone parents or members of other priority access groups under the National Plan for Equity of Access to Higher Education. The student assistance fund is available to assist students who are unable to meet costs associated with day-to-day participation in higher education, including books, class material, food, essential travel, childcare costs, medical costs, family difficulties such as bereavement. I believe these critical measures will assist many students. I will exchange more in a moment. Minister, to begin with, SUSIE and you have been Minister for Further and Higher Education now for two budgets. In October 2020, you announced a €20 million additional funding for SUSIE, which was very welcome. Your department spent the same in 2020 as in 2019 on SUSIE. We are on track for a slight increase in 2021, but nowhere near the €20 million announced in your first budget. Last month, you announced an additional €35 million for SUSIE. Only in response then to my question did you clarify that this would in fact be an increase of €15 million next year because it would not kick in until September. I would urge you to bring forward the measures you announced for SUSIE to take immediate effect, particularly increases to the SUSIE maintenance grant. Expecting students to wait until next September does nothing to address the cost of living they are facing right here and right now. Thank you to the Deputy. As the Deputy will know, the SUSIE scheme is demand-led, so I can set the criteria. Indeed, I can improve the criteria, but ultimately it is a demand-led scheme, so funds can only be drawn down from that scheme where applicants qualify for that scheme. But I should tell the Deputy, as of the 21st of this month, just a few days ago, SUSIE had received almost 97,000 applications. Almost 94,000 of them have been assessed. 74,600 have been assessed as eligible for support for this year. But this is SUSIE's 10th year in operation. I do share the Deputy's view that the SUSIE scheme needs an overhaul. I am expecting to receive the review from the SUSIE support group review probably about Christmas. I am looking forward to that. It has had student representatives on it, Department of Social Protection representatives, representatives of the universities and the institutions as well. I should point out, though, because I do note the Deputy's reference to headlines, this is real money, like 17,000 additional laptops provided free of charge to students across the higher education. Extra money for mental health services, badly needed funding, and a doubling of the Student Assistance Fund, which is now in place, $8 million when I took office, over $17 million this year. Yes, Minister, I do welcome the review on SUSIE, and I am glad to hear that that will be on your desk by Christmas. I think it is important that that is published immediately so that things can come into effect for the next year. But, Minister, you can see how people get lost in the millions and millions and double counting and figures and all that, that people feel that they are left behind in all of the millions. In July, as part of the package for the safe return to campus, Minister, you announced an extra $10 million in financial support for students and $3 million for mental health services on campus. And then a similar announcement was made the same week as the budget last month. I welcome these commitments at the time, as I know the difficulty many students are facing, but it now seems that instead of the $10 million extra that was announced, there will be $1 million less than last year in the Student Assistance Fund instead of this year. Instead of the $3 million in additional funding on mental health services, there will be no increase at all. Six colleges, the Technical University Dublin, Munster TU, Waterford, Dundalk Hill, Letterkenny and Carlow Institutes will actually receive less this year for mental health services than last year. So students need clarity on this. Yeah, and when you say students need clarity on it, I believe students have clarity on it. I mean, tomorrow I will be meeting with all Student Union Presidents right across the country in a meeting convened by the Union of Students of Ireland. We are regularly and I am personally engaging with student unions. But what I am saying, and I take the point about the millions, it is a peculiar point to have, I suppose, because we are providing such a large amount of funding that you are suggesting it is difficult to navigate. What I am saying to student unions on the ground and I am saying to college presidents is, when we allocate money here in Dublin, it is really important that a conversation about how that is spent on the college campus involves students. So we have allocated, if we take the mental health funding as an example, an additional €3 million in mental health. This is real money, it is real taxpayers' money, hard-earned taxpayers' money announced in the budget. And what we are saying to the college presidents is, when you engage with the students union in terms of how best to spend that in your college campus, because that will vary from college site to college site. But I think by any fair metric, over €400 million being spent this year on student supports. That is not to suggest that there is not more we need to do, but it is a very, very large sum of money. It is a very significant increase in money. And I think since this new department has been established, there have been many more funding streams to grow down on for students. But I do look forward to the SUSIE review, which I think will be very illustrative in addressing the reforms that are required.