Taoiseach Simon Harris recently spread misinformation when he suggested in a post on LinkedIn that changes he has made to the student grant scheme SUSI will enable students to work more at weekends and part-time without affecting their qualification for the grant.
Writing on LinkedIn, the taoiseach, who was previously Minister for Further and Higher Education, said that he’d made “two big improvements” to the grant in increasing the eligibility threshold and by making sure “that students who earn money while studying don’t have their grant affected by their income”.
The Student Universal Support Ireland (SUSI) grant scheme is the national authority for post-secondary education grants which offers financial support to students to pursue approved studies.
There are a range of eligibility criteria, including income criteria, which stipulates that an applicant’s total reckonable household income must fall below specific thresholds.
Income deductions and adjustments, such as ‘Holiday Earnings’, allow SUSI to deduct from or adjust the reckonable income threshold to improve an applicant’s grant rate.
In the video accompanying Mr Harris’s post, he claimed that he had made a change to make sure students can “work more at the weekends or more in the part-time job” and not have that income affect their qualification for the student grant.
However, Mr Harris neglected to mention that although there is an increase in the amount of money that a student can earn before those earnings are taken into account it is only in relation to holiday earnings, not weekend or part-time work undertaken during term time, as some viewers took it to mean.
Asked by Gript to clarify whether the change mentioned by Mr Harris will allow for increased weekend or part-time earnings without impacting on eligibility for the grants, SUSI responded that the amount a student can earn outside of term time – holiday earnings – has increased from €6,552 to €7,925 for the 2024/25 academic year.
A separate query to SUSI support reaffirmed that “any earnings a student makes outside of the holiday periods will be taken into account as reckonable income,” contrary to Mr Harris’s apparent claim in his post.
The periods normally considered as holidays by SUSI are two weeks at Easter, 12 weeks of Summer (June, July and August) and two weeks at Christmas.
Gript reiterated its request for clarification from the SUSI press office as to whether income earned while working weekend and part-time jobs during term time come under this increase, but didn’t receive a response by the time of writing.