Exclusive: UL students received over €38.5m in grants and fees in the past 4 years

By Tomás Heneghan

University of Limerick students have received over €38.5m in grants and fee contributions since the beginning of the 2012/2013 academic year.

Figures released to An Focal under the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act reveal that UL students received the fourth highest amount of State’s seven universities in grants and fees contributions from the Student Universal Support Ireland (SUSI) group over the past four years.

The total number of grants received by students at UL for the four-year period has been 12,049. Grants for the same period for UL students amounted to €23,404,020, while fees and student contribution paid by SUSI amounted to €14,634,350.

The number of grants awarded to UL students have also risen from 1,594 grants in 2012/2013 to 4,410 grants in 2015/2016.

The resultant grant figures also rose accordingly from just over €3m in 2012/2013 to over €7.6m in 2015/2016.

Equally, the fees and student contribution paid by SUSI for UL students increased from almost €2.5m in 2012/2013 to almost €7.5 in 2014/2015. Figures for the current academic year are not yet available.

In total, the seven State universities received almost €257m from SUSI over the four year period. However the fees and student contribution for all universities for the current academic year are not yet available and so the overall cost could be much higher based on the spend on fees and student contribution over previous years.

National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG) students received the highest total sum over the past four academic years, with grants, fees and student contribution costs for SUSI amounting to almost €49.5m.

The total number of grants paid to students at NUIG for the period 2012/2013 to 2015/2016 amounted to 14,875.

The lowest figure paid to a State university for the four-year period was almost €25.5m, which was given in grants, fees and student contribution to Trinity College Dublin (TCD).

The total figure paid to TCD students or on their behalf by SUSI equated to 8,718 grants over the period 2012/2013 to 2015/2016.

The amount of grants, fees and student contribution awarded to or on behalf of students at  other universities include:

• Over €29.6m for Dublin City University (DCU)
• Almost €33m for National University of Ireland, Maynooth (NUIM)
• Almost €41.5m for University College Cork (UCC)
• Over €39m for University College Dublin (UCD)