It has been revealed that parents, who have two children in college, are set to have their fees cut by €1,500 in Budget 2027.
There were reports that a €250 reduction to college fees was proposed; however, no formal announcement has been made.
Speaking to the Limerick Voice UL Student President, Eva McCormack, said that the government “are not prioritising it [college fees] in their actual policies.”
In Budget 2023, a temporary €1,000 reduction in college fees was announced. However, in Budget 2026, this changed to a permanent reduction of €500, decreasing college fees from €3,000 to €2,500.
“One of the promises made by both Simon Harris and Micheál Martin was the reduction or elimination of student contribution fees,” Ms McCormack explained.
“Simon [Harris] even posted a Tiktok video, where he stated publicly, they understood the struggles and the hassle and the amount of stress that [college fees] can cause on families, and yet it was his government who undid, what they call the temporary relief, rather than an actual movement towards reduction of fees completely.”
A €16 million package to extend the SUSI grant eligibility was finalised last week.
However, Ms McCormack highlighted that “there’s definitely a lack of understanding and a lack of real-world practice between the grants and students’ actual lives.”
Currently, the income of parents is taken into account when deciding the eligibility for a student grant. However, this process does not consider the students who are self-funded.
“If you don’t get finance from your parents, the only way you can prove that to SUSI is by no longer speaking to your parents,” Ms McCormack explained.
The UL Student President also outlined that the current student grants, set in last year’s budget, are not keeping pace with the cost-of-living crisis.
“I think that there are many students who are on these grants that are still struggling to exist and the problem is by being on these grants, a lot of students can’t work because you have to have a certain income to get these grants in the first place.”
Ms McCormack also stated that there needs to be ‘better finances put toward student specific accommodation.’
“In the government’s national higher education accommodation strategy, they stated that they wanted to build, I think it’s 45,000 new rooms for students by 2025, but we expect to see more than 2,000 student increase by 2025.”
“The problem is remaining the exact same between now and then. They’re building more, but that’s not solving the overall issue. We need to see more investment into that sort of remit and area.”
Ms McCormack said that we need to see ‘more investment in the universities in general.’
“There’s currently a massive funding gap between what universities are providing and what they’re actually [receiving] from the government.”
“We need to see that gap close. The gap was acknowledged in 2022 by Simon Harris and it hasn’t been addressed since then. It’s only grown since then.”
Budget 2027 is set to be announced tomorrow, Tuesday, October 6.
Updates will be posted on Limerick Voice.