Students struggling with cost of living should seek welfare supports, says minister

Education minister James Lawless: 'Those students who are struggling the most should be receiving the most help, and I certainly put significant meaning into the system to target those students.' 

Higher education minister James Lawless has said students who are struggling with the rising cost of living should reach out to their welfare officer or ask about the student assistance fund.

Mr Lawless said he had increased all the maintenance grants “in terms of quantity” by increasing the threshold for the Susi grant and the valuation fee.

“Some 70% of households don’t actually pay that in full because they are eligible for supports and contributions towards it,” Mr Lawless said.

It comes as Teachers' Union of Ireland (TUI) president Anthony Quinn warned the union is prepared to “act boldly” if long‑running issues around pay, workloads, and secure employment are not resolved.

Mr Lawless, who spoke at the TUI annual conference in Kilkenny on Tuesday, said funding had been increased for disability supports, students with mental‑health challenges, and the student assistance hardship fund.

“Those students who are struggling the most should be receiving the most help, and I certainly put significant meaning into the system to target those students," he said.

“And if that’s not working, they should engage with their access officer, their welfare officer in the college, and see what is there for offer, including the student assistance fund, which is there for discretion in hardship cases."

Delegates Joanne Waters and Jacqueline Hayes at the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) conference in Kilkenny. Picture: Tommy Clancy

It follows the minister’s second national student accommodation strategy, which aims to deliver 42,000 purpose‑built student beds by 2035.

Couch-surfing or commuting

Many students in Cork and across Ireland are currently left with little choice but to commute long distances, couch‑surf, or miss lectures and elements of college life

 altogether because of the shortage of accommodation near campuses.

Asked what plans are in place for students who are already in college or waiting for housing, Mr Lawless said he was “not sitting around waiting for things to happen. I’m actually driving this [plan] on as quickly as possible.”

 He added: “We have 53 projects already submitted to me for consideration, right across the country. So we would get those going as quickly as possible."

Mr Quinn said it will “speak clearly” and, if necessary, “act boldly” over any delays in payments and pay deals.

“Our members have waited long enough, carried enough, and conceded enough,” he said.

“If this system will not change through goodwill and patience, then this union will force it to change through strength and solidarity. 

“Lecturers are carrying excessive and increasingly complex workloads. Programme co-ordination, online delivery, student support, research expectations, administration, and institutional change have all expanded, yet the national structures governing workload and recognition have not kept pace.

“Too many colleagues remain trapped in forms of precarity that should long since have been consigned to the past. Too many issues that should have been resolved through a serious national industrial relations process remain mired in ambiguity.

“Too many researchers are still left facing pension injustice that has gone on for years beyond what any fair-minded person could defend.

“We know it matters to us. The question is whether the State is prepared to treat the people who deliver it with the seriousness its work deserves,” Mr Quinn said.

He described the mood in the sector as “hardened” into a “growing conviction that too much which should have been settled nationally is being left to drift, to localise, or to languish in structures that produce discussion without conclusion".