Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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501. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills to outline the savings her Department made by adjusting the adjacent rates for qualifying for higher education grants for each year since the changes were introduced. [10567/15]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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The Deputy will be aware that Budget 2011 provided for a number of student grant measures, which came into effect for the 2011/12, including the change in the assessment of the qualifying distance criterion for the non-adjacent rate of grant from 24 kilometres to 45 kilometres.

The 24 km distance criterion was originally set in 1968. Since then, significant improvements have taken place in the road and rail network.

At the time of Budget 2011, it was anticipated that this particular change would achieve a full year saving of €30 million. Prior to the change, the percentage split between non-adjacent and adjacent was 77% and 23% respectively. The current split for 2014/15, based on the latest data for awardees processed through SUSI, is 57% (non-adjacent) and 43% (adjacent).

A range of budget measures have been introduced since Budget 2011, as such it is difficult to precisely attribute year-on-year savings to any one particular measure. Furthermore, the Deputy will appreciate that the cohort of students qualifying for grants each year varies; and is influenced by a number of factors such as income thresholds, residency, previous academic attainment, nationality etc.