Grant Payments
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-29
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Marian Harkin (IND), Sligo-Leitrim

I think the Minister will be back in a few minutes, but I will respond to this question. The reply states the student grant scheme is a universal scheme and the rules including the means-testing of reckonable income are applied on an equal basis to all students who make an application. In general, for student grant purposes, students are categorised according to their circumstances, either as students dependent on their parent or legal guardian or as independent mature students.
Students may be assessed as independent students if they have attained the age of 23 on 1 January of the year of first entry or re-entry to an approved further education course or an approved higher education course and they have not been ordinarily resident with their parents from the previous 1 October. Otherwise, they are assessed as dependent students, that is, assessed with reference to parental income. Applicants who do not meet the criteria to be assessed as an independent student for grant purposes or who cannot supply the necessary documentation to establish independent living for the required period may still apply to the awarding authority, SUSI, to have their grant eligibility assessed as a dependent student.
Mature students living at home may have benefited from recent improvements to the scheme. This academic year, all income thresholds to receive a student grant increased, with standard rate thresholds increasing by at least 15%. In budget 2026, the Minister introduced the first permanent reduction in the student contribution of €500. Families whose household income is under €115,000 can also receive a €500 grant towards their student contribution for this academic year. The threshold for this grant will also increase in September to a very significant €120,000.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:34+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-29