2026-05-12

155. Deputy Danny Healy-Rae asked the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science his views regarding the holiday earnings disregard for students applying for Student Universal Support Ireland, SUSI, grants; his views on whether it is unfair that only income from work during holidays is considered, and students who have a small weekend job lose out on the SUSI grant as that puts them over the threshold for a grant; and if he will review this matter. [35185/26]

It is very unfair that only income from work during holidays is considered for students who wish to avail of the SUSI grant. If they have a small weekend job they lose out, as there is no disregard for that. What is the reason for this? If they have a bit of work for weekends, why not allow it to be disregarded, like the holiday pay? Youngsters appreciate work.

I worked all the way through second level and third level and afterwards. Then I ended up studying while I was working, so I did it both ways round. I totally appreciate the industriousness and the necessity in many cases for students to work through their education. How we have it structured is that under the SUSI grant scheme, income from employment that represents holiday earnings outside of term time is calculated on the basis of Easter holidays, summer holidays and Christmas holidays. This can be disregarded when calculating the means of the family for the SUSI grant application. In the current budget, we are increasing that from €8,424 to €8,830, which is an increase of about €400, or 5%. That is something I was minded to do. As I said in response to a question earlier, there are a number of choices in each budget. We cannot do everything so we try to look at how we can approach something with targeted measures. This was one of the ones that was important, even if it was only 5%. It was something I was conscious to do in order to keep student earnings in line with inflation and allowing that to be taken into account. Students should not be penalised for going out to work outside of term time. We have what we call an options paper on the cost of college, which is an analysis of engagement with students. I had a meeting with a number of students' unions and other stakeholders recently in Portlaoise. We examined the different asks they had regarding grants, fees, thresholds, student accommodation and the earnings disregard for students' income at weekends or over term breaks. Next, I will take all those different requests and publish them as an options paper and have a costing and impact analysis against each one. We can make decisions then and I would welcome the input from those in the Houses who are interested in the brief, as to which options are preferable to others and why people believe that to be the case. I will engage in good faith with Deputies in the House as we approach the budget to consider those options.

I thank the Minister for his reply. What I am saying is that it will cost the State nothing to allow the work students do at weekends to be disregarded for the SUSI grant. The costs are exorbitant now for students going to college and it is only natural that they would want to help their parents out and help to get themselves to college and pay for all the things the Minister listed, including the fees, student accommodation and travel from places as far away as Cahersiveen and Dingle and all the places in Kerry that they have to travel from to colleges right around the country. What benefit is it to the State to stop youngsters from going to work for the weekend? It is hurting businesses that may have built up a relationship with these youngsters during the holidays. I see no point whatsoever in it. It has been known all our lives that we should encourage youngsters to work but this is doing the opposite.

They do not need to leave Kerry any more at all, because we have a fine university in Tralee with MTU. I visited it recently with the Minister, Deputy Foley, and Deputy Cahill and we saw it in action. Professor Maggie Cusack and the then chairperson, Jimmy Deenihan, welcomed us to the facility. The university is providing world-class services. If students do want to leave Kerry, however, there are course options available to them. I know it is expensive, and I talked earlier about the recent cuts we have implemented. There is a €750 million package to assist with the cost of travel, in terms of excise cuts and many other measures. There is also the student Leap card and the young adult Leap card to use on public transport and, of course, there are the €500 cut to student fees, which is permanent, and all of the increases to grants, particularly the non-adjacent grants for students who have to travel that bit farther. However, there is a cost to the State. It was calculated last year that exempting all students' earnings would cost about €26 million. To put that into perspective, that same amount could pay for a 10% increase in all maintenance grants or could increase all income thresholds by 10%. There are choices to be made regarding whether we increase grants or thresholds or disregard student earnings to a greater extent.

As much as anyone else, I welcome the MTU in Tralee for students in Kerry. However, I would say again that it does not make any sense at all if these youngsters could work and earn another bit of money to help themselves to go to college. It would help to take the burden off their parents. The Minister is talking about all the things the Government has given out and that is fine, but these people and their families are still under financial pressures that were never seen before. This is especially the case in families where there is more than one student in the house. I ask the Minister to look at this and to give these lovely young boys and girls a chance to work. They love to work. I always had someone like them in the bar at home and I appreciated them. We can learn things from young people that we might not otherwise learn. I ask the Minister to look at this again in a favourable way.

As I said at the outset, I worked all through college at a variety of things through weekends, evenings in some cases, and all through my summers and, indeed, often Christmas and Easter holidays as well. I would make the point to the Deputy that there is nothing stopping students from doing that. Students can work, and they can choose. It equates roughly to Christmas holidays, Easter holidays and summer holidays. However, if students want to say they are going to work every weekend instead or work one part of the year and not another, it is entirely up to them. A threshold of €8,830 has been imposed now. To work it through, if we were to take that away and say there is no threshold, theoretically, a student could earn not €8,000 but €80,000 or €100,000. It would actually be a backdoor to the household or family suddenly having their income threshold nearly doubled. I know the Deputy would agree that is not desirable either because we have to have a progressive, fair system that targets supports to those who need them the most. I know that is maybe an extreme example, but there is logic to this and how it is calculated. Originally, the idea was to discourage students from working during term time. That is why it was applied to holiday periods. That is more relaxed now and they can choose to work weekends if they wish. There has to be some level at which it is set, however.