Grant Payments
Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-16
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Robert Troy (FF), Longford-Westmeath

I thank Senator Crowe for raising this important issue. It is a matter that has been brought to the attention of the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science on a number of occasions over the past few years, but Senator Crowe makes valid points in his contribution. The main financial support available to students is the student grant scheme. The scheme is administered by Student Universal Support Ireland, SUSI, on behalf of the Department. In order to qualify for a grant, all applicants must fulfil eligibility criteria which include income, residency, nationality and progression. This process will often involve documentation being submitted in support of an application. Under Article 36 of the grant scheme, an applicant must submit the required information upon request from SUSI. However, it is worth noting that SUSI has a number of significant data-sharing agreements with public bodies in place already that reduce the documentation burden on applicants. Examples of these include information feeds from the Department of Social Protection, the Revenue Commissioners and the CAO. Through these feeds, SUSI can receive the relevant information on income or social welfare payments directly from source. This reduces the need for an applicant to submit documentation with their application and improves efficiency for SUSI. It is acknowledged that for self-employed households there may be more documentation required during the application process. That is why SUSI, in collaboration with the Department, is constantly looking at ways to make the process more efficient for the applicant, be it through additional data-sharing agreements or examining internal processes.
The SUSI support team also works closely with all applicants to support them. In addition to the current supports in place to help applicants, City of Dublin Education and Training Board is currently undertaking a significant ICT and business transformation project relating to the modernisation of the student grant application scheme. This aligns with Government policy on providing digital services to our citizens. SUSI is continuously improving in processing applications. It has consistently met and exceeded the key performance indicators within the management framework agreement with the Department of further and higher education. For example, in the academic year 2025-26, the mean period of time for the initial assessment of an application was just over two weeks, and just over one week for the assessment of returned documentation. It is important to also outline the significant enhancements to the student grant scheme the Department has made in recent years. For example, all income thresholds increased by 15% this academic year, bringing the overall threshold up to €115,000. For the upcoming academic year, the grant threshold has been widened further to €120,000 and the non-adjacent maintenance rates have been increased by between €200 and €430. In addition to strengthening the student grant scheme, the student contribution fee has been permanently reduced by €500. This means that eligible undergraduate students from households earning up to €120,000 will pay no more than €2,000 towards the student contribution charge from 2026-27.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-04-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-16