Third Level Fees
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-02
============================================================

James Lawless (FF), Kildare North

I agree with what the Deputy said. For the record, it is €120,000 rather than €100,000. I increased the threshold last year. Indeed, the Tánaiste, when he held this portfolio, increased it before me. We have continued to increase that threshold to the level that up to 70% of Irish households now qualify for at least some form of fee subvention. In fact, all benefit from the universal measures but 70% of households are now eligible for other supports.
The Deputy mentioned the scenario of multiple children from a household attending college. These are the cases I would like to look at in a bit more detail in order to see how they might be dealt with by means of targeted measures as opposed to taking a one-size-fits-all approach, which we may well do also. We must consider whether there are particular courses that are missing out at the moment and on which we could focus? The Deputy mentioned the alienation scenario, which is always raised with me and which I am taking a good look at in order to identify what we can do.
There are a number of other measures. The student accommodation strategy is up and running. Some results have begun to emerge already and some proposals emanating from the strategy in terms of greater accommodation provision. I hope to see that being accelerated as fast as possible. We have invited all colleges to make submissions in respect of the strategy. There are a number of different facets to the cost of attending college and making life easier for students.

---

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/dail/2026-07-02/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:52:14+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-02