Teachers Conference: Fee cut for asylum-seeker students

Asylum-seeker students may soon get a chance at a third-level education that financial barriers have previously blocked most from receiving, Education Minister Jan O’Sullivan has said.

Such students currently face full international fees of at least €15,000 a year, including those who have spent all their second-level education or longer in Irish schools. They are also ineligible for support from student grants because of eligibility criteria, a combination of issues the minister says effectively excludes most asylum seekers from a future they have worked hard to achieve.

Ms O’Sullivan told the Teachers’ Union of Ireland congress that she is determined that, from next September, asylum seekers who have been in Irish schools for at least five years would no longer have to pay any more than their classmates.