Over the last three budgets, a cut of €1,000 was applied to the contribution fee for third-level students, but it is expected that it will return to €3,000 this year.

This was the third successive 12-month period where over 100,000 people immigrated to Ireland.

One afternoon I took out my tape recorder and taped my grandmother as she recalled her memories of her childhood in the 1930s when she was a pupil in Bofield National School and lived in Ellemountain, a few miles from Bonniconlon.

Hannah Nash's Greener Fields shares the stories of young people who chose to leave Ireland, and what it taught them about home