James Lawless

Students living in the private residential sector have the same rules as anyone else living in that sector. This is something I have looked at and discussed with the Minister, Deputy Browne. I have a limited remit because the Minister for housing and the Department of housing have full control over the rental rules and landlord and tenant legislation. I make submissions and I have engagement with …

The City of Dublin Education and Training Board, ETB, made reference in its annual accounts to a legacy IT project for SUSI that started in 2015 – before either of us were in this House - but experienced a number of problems and delays. Ultimately, it did not result in the successful delivery of a completed system. Although unacceptable, IT projects, unfortunately, can encounter difficulties both…

I agree with the Deputy. Following the notice of termination in 2021, the City of Dublin ETB commissioned KPMG accountants to draft a report focusing on lessons learned arising from the project and what had gone wrong, which included looking at supplier issues, the delays and all the factors that combined to render the project unsuitable. A number of recommendations came out of that. I will not go…

In respect of the cost overrun on the project, the figures that I have available to me tell me that the cost of the project was approximately €3.8 million between 2015 and March 2022. That figure emerged at the Committee of Public Accounts recently. The project included internal staffing costs, external providers, coding and software that were built up and engineering work that was carried out. S…

Over €351 million has been allocated for students supports and related activities this year. In addition, it is estimated that the free fees initiative costs for the current academic year will be in the order of €450 million. That is just shy of €1 billion in student supports in the current year alone. When we are engaged in budget planning and negotiations, student supports are the primary item o…

SUSI operates an appeals process. It continues to refine its processes. I have asked it to do that. We ran advertisement campaigns last summer for the first time. I initiated that because some students were not aware of their eligibility for the grant. The income thresholds are now very high. They are up to €120,000 for certain grants, which was unheard of previously. Some families on middle incom…

I understand the issue the Deputy raises about mature students and returning emigrants. Deputy Roche has tabled a question on that matter to which I will respond to in more detail later. In terms of documentation, that is a difficult issue. I am sure the Deputy is not suggesting that we should give grants out without any application process or robust checks. It is taxpayer's money that we are tal…

This is a difficult issue, and it is one that I have engaged with the students unions on. I have also spoken to my officials about it on a number of occasions. If students are living with their parents, there is a working assumption in the system that they are being supported by their parents to some extent at least. Perhaps that support is not through direct funds. Rather, it comes in the form of…

The trauma-informed view is extremely important. Having chaired the justice committee in the previous term, we saw many examples of trauma and how it led into addiction and triggered a certain path in life. I fully support a trauma-informed approach. It is one of the reasons I committed additional funding to the mental health budget in higher education institutions this year. On mature students, …

I have the figures for those who cited estrangement on their application form. In the 2023-24 year, it was 184 students; in 2024-25, it was 165 students; and in the most recent year, 2025-26, it was 213 students. When I said it was a couple of percent, I exaggerated. It is 0.19% of total applications. However, that makes it even more pertinent that we address it. There might be a tendency to say i…

I fully recognise the distress that has arisen from defective concrete block situation in the Deputy's constituency and in other constituencies. The Deputy may be aware that I met some members of his group. I have not had a Ministry directly relevant to the issue but at the MacGill Summer School two summers ago, I sat down with some of the group's councillors and we had a very good discussion. It …

More broadly, in terms of supporting students and families, particularly on lower income levels, my focus has always been on targeted supports. While I have introduced universal measures on fees, and I will continue to do so, my focus is on ensuring that, for people who are on the verge of missing out and would not experience college otherwise and for vulnerable families and people who may be the …

To reflect on the educational opportunities in Donegal, the Deputy's constituency, and I know he is a proud Donegal man, the Minister of State, Deputy McConalogue, and Deputy Gallagher have also made representations to me on many of these matters. I launched the veterinary school in ATU Letterkenny recently. It is great. There will be 40 vet places in the north west, primarily for large animal pra…

This is an all-of-government priority in terms of meeting the disability needs of our people. We made a decision at a Cabinet subcommittee early in the term that my Department can increase the number of therapists coming through third level and into the workforce. An interdepartmental working group is working with the Ministers for Health and Education and Youth and will examine the number of plac…

We are very much on the same page. I will give the Deputy a list of courses that have been identified in consultation with the Ministers for Health and Education and Youth and myself. Occupational, therapists, physiotherapists, speech and language therapists, dieticians, radiation therapists, radiographers, medical scientists, podiatrists, social workers and educational psychologists are on the li…

I have explored that and my officials are actively exploring the apprenticeship route. There is also the recognition of private learning where somebody has worked in a related discipline and rather than starting on day one in year one they could come into the system midstream or at a more advanced stage, if we take into account their prior learning. The issue the Deputy mentioned in respect of CD…

I thank the Deputy. The PATH 4 programme is extremely important. I am very proud of it and the Taoiseach is very supportive of it as well. We have discussed it directly in Cabinet. It supports the goal of enabling all learners with disabilities, including intellectual disabilities, to avail of higher education. I have visited a number of PATH 4 locations, including in Cork - I think it is called t…

Yes, that is fair. I think 193 students are enrolled in PATH 4 phase 2. The original target or expectation was that it might hit 160 students, so it has gone well beyond that, which I am delighted to see. They are running across 11 different programmes. I will not list them out but there is a reasonably good spread geographically and they include the technological universities and the traditional …

I will address the UDL piece first. I thank an Teachta Connolly. I know Deputy Ó Cearúil is taking this question in his stead. Deputy Connolly has invited me to a UDL conference in University of Galway later this year, which he is involved in arranging and which I very much hope to attend. That will be a very important milestone in rolling out UDL more widely and discussions about this issue. In …

I am very familiar with the challenges of commuting from Kildare to various colleges. I have two daughters, one attending Maynooth and one attending UCD, both of whom recently graduated, and I have seen the commute, the grind and so on. The Deputy and I have worked together on improving public transport on many of those services. When I came to review the grants this year, I was mindful of non-ad…

In any social democracy, where do we draw the line and where should income levels and thresholds be? We are at a situation now where the threshold to avail of the minimum form of a grant is €120,000 per household, which means 80% of households in Ireland are eligible for at least some form of SUSI grant intervention. To the Deputy's broader point about how we draw the line, and there are a number…

I wholeheartedly agree with the Deputy. Many of the thresholds are now so high and some of the benefits are so broadly available that maybe people have not realised they are eligible for them. I did launch a communications campaign in the national media last summer as a result of that to make people aware. Deputies may have seen it running across national radio and TV. That did actually drive an i…

That broad-based fund is available and it is an additional student support on top of the other schemes there.

I think an Teachta O'Connell is standing in for an Teachta Roche. I acknowledge that he raised this issue with me during Questions on Policy or Legislation earlier in the week. It is an important issue. This is a universal scheme. Means testing of reckonable income is applied to students on an equal basis. I will recap the rules that pertain to mature students. A student is considered to be indep…

Lifelong learning is at the core of everything I seek to do in the Department. It is one of the reasons I brought the proposal for a national skills observatory to Cabinet last week. This dataset will enable future labour force needs to be forecast and emerging occupation trends to be modelled, predicted and met well by the education and training systems. Just last Friday, I attended a Skillnet ev…