Danny Healy-Rae: Let students work weekends without penalty

Minister, I suppose what I'm asking you is, it's very unfair that all the income from work during the holidays is considered for students who wish to avail of the SUSY grant. And if they work, if they have a small weekend job, they lose out, as there's no disregard for that. Minister, can you answer me, what is the reason for this? I mean, if they have a bit of work for weekends, why not allow it to be disregarded, like the holiday pay? Youngsters, they appreciate work, and I'll come back to you. Yes, go raibh maith agat, Tácha, and I indeed worked all the way through second level, third level, and afterwards, and then I ended up studying when I was working, so I did it both ways around. So I totally appreciate the industriousness and the necessity in many cases for students to work through their education. So the way we have it is that under the student grant scheme, the SUSY grant scheme, income from employment, which represents holiday earnings outside of term time, it's calculated on the basis of being Easter holidays, summer holidays, and Christmas holidays, can be deducted, so that that can be disregarded when calculating the means of the family for the SUSY grant application. We're actually increasing that from this year in the current budget from 8424 up to 8830. It's an increase of about 400 euro, a 5% increase. That's something I was minded to do. As I was saying in a few questions ago, there's a number of choices in each budget. We can't do everything, so we try to look at how can we approach with targeted measures. That was one of the ones that was important. Even if it was only 5%, it was something that I was conscious to do to keep the student earnings in line with inflation, moving up, allowing that to be taken into account, because a student shouldn't be penalised for going out to work outside of term time. We have what we call an options paper, a cost of college paper, and that is an analysis of engagement with students. I had a meeting with a number of student unions and stakeholders recently in Portlaoise, where we examined the different asks that they had, whether it was grants, whether it was fees, whether it was thresholds, whether it was student accommodation, whether it was indeed the earnings disregard that comes from student income at the weekends or over term breaks. What I'm going to do next is take all those different requests, publish them as an options paper, have a costing against each one, and also have an impact analysis against each one. So we can make decisions then, and I'd welcome the House's input on that, those who are interested in the brief, as to which options are preferable to others and why people believe that to be the case. I'm going to engage with good faith deputies around the House as we approach the budget to consider those points. You see, what I'm saying to you is that this will cost you or the state nothing to allow students that what work they do at weekends be disregarded for the SUSY grant. And I mean, the costs are exorbitant for students going to school, and it's only natural that they want to help their parents out and help to get themselves to college and pay for all the things that are listed there. The fees and the student accommodation and the travel from places as far away as Cairns, Syvene and Dingle and all the places of Kerry that they have to travel to colleges right around the country. But what I'm saying to Minister, what benefit is it to the state to stop youngsters going to work for the weekend? It's hurting businesses that maybe haven't built up a relationship with these youngsters during the holidays. And I see no point whatsoever in it, because it has been known all our lives to encourage youngsters to work. We're doing the opposite. Thanks, Deputy. Well, they don't need to leave Kerry anymore at all, because we have a fine university in Tralee with MTU. So I visited recently with Minister Foley, Deputy Kyle, and we saw it in action. And indeed, Maggie Cusack and Jimmie Deanahan welcomed it to the facility. And it is a university providing world-class services there now. But if they do want to leave Kerry, there are, of course, options available to them. I know it is expensive, and I know that I talked earlier about the cuts we've implemented recently, the £750 million package to assist with the cost of travel in terms of excess cuts and many other measures. There's also the student LEAP card, there's also the young adult LEAP card, fees on public transport. And, of course, there's things like the cuts to student fees of €500 permanently and all the increases to grants, particularly the non-adjacent grants for students that have to travel that bit further. There is a cost to the state, because if we exempt all of a student's earnings, it was calculated last year, it would cost about £26 million to do that. Just to put it in perspective, that same money would actually pay a 10% increase in all maintenance grants, or it would increase all income thresholds by 10% either. So there are choices. Do we increase grants, do we increase thresholds, or do we disregard student earnings to a greater extent? I would, as much as anyone else, welcome Dean to you and to the students in Kerry. But again, I say to you, it doesn't make any sense at all in the world if these youngsters could work and earn another bit of money to help themselves to go to college. And to take the burden off their parents, because you're talking about all the things that the government has given out, and that's fine. But these people still have financial pressures that were never seen before on themselves and on their families, and especially when there's more than one student in the house. I'm asking you, Minister, to look at this, and to give these people a chance to work. Boys and girls, lovely young boys and girls, and they love to work. I always had someone like them in the bar at home, and appreciated them, and would learn from young people things that you might not learn at all. Please, Minister, I'm asking you to look at this again, in a favourable way. As I said to the Deputy, I worked all through college, I worked on a variety of things, all through weekends, all through evenings in some cases, and all through my summers, and indeed off Christmas and Easter holidays as well, right through. There's nothing stopping students from doing that. Students can work, and they can choose. It equates to roughly Christmas holidays, Easter holidays, and the summer holidays. But if a student wants to say, no, I'm going to work every weekend instead, or if they want to say, well, I'm going to work this part of the year, not the other part of the year, it's entirely up to them. But there is a threshold imposed, 8830 now. And so just to work it through, if we were to take away that and say there's no threshold, theoretically a student could earn not 8,000, they could earn 100,000 or 80,000, and it would actually be a backdoor to the household or the family suddenly having their income threshold nearly doubled. So I know you'd agree that isn't desirable either, because we have to have a progressive fair system that targets and supports those in need most. And I know that's maybe an extreme example, but there is a logic to this and how it's calculated. Originally the idea was to discourage students working during term time, and that's why it was applied to holiday periods. But actually that's more relaxed now, and they can choose to work weekends if they wish. But there has to be some level that it's set at.