Grant Payments Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-16 ============================================================ Robert Troy (FF), Longford-Westmeath SUSI processes more than 100,000 grants annually. Some 110,000 students applied for support in this academic year with the Government investing €350 million to support students. A significant number of people are availing of Government support. I think we all agree that the Minister, Deputy Lawless, is engaged with the student unions, the bodies, students and their families, and is continuously looking at ways to challenge the costs of college. He is conscious of that, and we will see positive changes in the upcoming academic year. I will bring the specific points to the Minister because I know he is determined to improve the efficiency and experience for students applying for the SUSI grant. We have already seen data sharing between Revenue and social protection. It is about looking at how we can share more data to alleviate the pressures on self-employed people so they can feel the benefits of data sharing equally to the PAYE worker. I will bring back the message raised forcibly today to the Minister. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. 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