Grant Payments
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-12
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James Lawless (FF), Kildare North

They do not need to leave Kerry any more at all, because we have a fine university in Tralee with MTU. I visited it recently with the Minister, Deputy Foley, and Deputy Cahill and we saw it in action. Professor Maggie Cusack and the then chairperson, Jimmy Deenihan, welcomed us to the facility. The university is providing world-class services. If students do want to leave Kerry, however, there are course options available to them. I know it is expensive, and I talked earlier about the recent cuts we have implemented. There is a €750 million package to assist with the cost of travel, in terms of excise cuts and many other measures. There is also the student Leap card and the young adult Leap card to use on public transport and, of course, there are the €500 cut to student fees, which is permanent, and all of the increases to grants, particularly the non-adjacent grants for students who have to travel that bit farther. However, there is a cost to the State. It was calculated last year that exempting all students' earnings would cost about €26 million. To put that into perspective, that same amount could pay for a 10% increase in all maintenance grants or could increase all income thresholds by 10%. There are choices to be made regarding whether we increase grants or thresholds or disregard student earnings to a greater extent.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-12/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-12