When Faye Ní Dhomhnaill turned 21, her life changed overnight. A row at home – the kind that had been brewing for years – finally tipped into a rupture. She left, telling herself it would be temporary. Weeks stretched into months, then years. By the time she returned to her studies in Galway, she was on her own.
“Overnight, I had to figure out rent, bills, food, everything, without that safety net.”
Like thousands of students each year, Ní Dhomhnaill depended on a Susi grant to keep her in college. Susi, or Student Universal Support Ireland, is the main state financial support scheme for higher education.
For many students it is the difference between staying in college and dropping out. The scheme is built on the assumption that students are supported by their families, and so eligibility is largely assessed on household income. Applicants under the age of 23 are considered “dependent” by default, unless they can prove otherwise. That link to family income is what makes Susi so difficult to access for those who are estranged.
RM Block
When Ní Dhomhnaill told Susi she was no longer in contact with her family, she hit a wall.
“They kept saying: you don’t have a Tusla document or a Garda report, so you don’t qualify. But who at 21 rings Tusla to say they’re not speaking to their parents?” she says.
[ Young students with Susi grants less likely to complete degree, study findsOpens in new window ]
That demand for official paperwork, whether from child protection services, the courts, or An Garda Síochána, is at the heart of what campaigners now describe as an unworkable and damaging system.
Family estrangement is complex, messy and often silent. For students like Ní Dhomhnaill, whose estrangement unfolded after she was already in higher education, there was no official record to fall back on.
This is why so many estranged students fall through the cracks, says Angel Cassin, the chief executive of Together Estranged, a charity that supports adults cut off from their parents or families.
“The system assumes there is a paper trail. But in reality, most people leave quietly,” says Cassin.
The stigma surrounding estrangement adds another layer of difficulty.
“In Ireland, family is sacrosanct,” Cassin says. “The idea of not speaking to your parents runs so deep against cultural norms that many students feel ashamed to even admit it. That shame keeps them isolated, and it keeps the problem invisible.”
I had letters from student officers, from a TD, from friends and family confirming I was estranged. None of it was accepted
— Faye Ní Dhomhnaill
For many students, Susi’s criteria can mean living in limbo. Ní Dhomhnaill spent nearly a full academic year not knowing if her fees would be covered. “I was in final year when they finally approved my grant, week 11 of semester two. By then I’d been scraping by, borrowing, even relying on St Vincent de Paul to step in and pay fees.”
Others simply give up. Student unions regularly meet young people who technically qualify but do not even apply, knowing they cannot get the kind of proof Susi demands. “It feels like the system is telling you, you should have stayed at home, even if home wasn’t safe,” says Ní Dhomhnaill.
The mental health toll is heavy. Estrangement already carries isolation and stress. When coupled with financial precarity, it can push students out of education entirely.
Ní Dhomhnaill, who is now the vice-president for campaigns in Amlé – formerly the Union of Students in Ireland – describes it as “drowning every time I tried to apply ... you’re fighting a system that feels designed to reject you.”
Campaigners talk not just about the emotional burden but about what they call the “admin of estrangement.”
When family ties are severed, simple tasks become tangled in bureaucracy. Students may lack basic documents such as birth certificates, medical records or guarantors for housing.
They find themselves endlessly asked to “prove” their situation in letters, forms and appeals. What for others is straightforward – putting down a parent’s income or address – becomes an obstacle course of paperwork, explanations and refusals.
[ Student grant 2025 applications up 7,500 on last yearOpens in new window ]
Amlé, working with Together Estranged and with psychologists such as Karl Melvin, is campaigning for reform. In a new policy paper they argue that Susi must modernise its rules to reflect the reality of students’ lives.
They want the definition of proof of estrangement widened to include letters from counsellors, teachers, GPs, community leaders or student union officers, rather than limiting it to Tusla or Gardaí.
They want students to be able to move from “dependent” to “independent” status if their family circumstances change during their degree, something the current system does not allow. And they are calling for the age barrier to be lowered, since only those over 23 are automatically considered independent.
Campaigners argue that all adults over 18 who support themselves should qualify.
These reforms sit within a broader set of changes the student movement says are urgently needed. Amlé has argued for higher grant rates and thresholds to keep pace with rising rents and living costs, as well as recognition of private leases and other documents as proof of independent living.
At present Susi explicitly refuses to accept private rental agreements, despite the fact that most young renters rely on them. They also want the rules to be adapted to modern forms of study, extending grants to online and flexible learning, and abolishing outdated limits such as caps on summer earnings.
Cassin points to models in the UK, where universities have pledged targeted support for estranged students. “There, they recognised early on that estrangement affects not just your emotional life but the practical admin of everything,” she says. “Students were being locked out of housing because they could not get guarantors, or they could not prove family support for grants. Universities stepped up with training and pledges to support them. Ireland is lagging behind.”
For Amlé, the issue is part of a wider struggle to make Susi fairer for all. Rising rents and living costs mean the grant no longer stretches far enough, even for those who qualify. But for estranged students, the stakes are even higher. If they cannot access support, they often cannot stay in education at all.
“This is not about loopholes or people trying to game the system,” says Ní Dhomhnaill. “I had letters from student officers, from a TD, from friends and family confirming I was estranged. None of it was accepted. The pile just got bigger and bigger. And I thought, How much more can I give them? It felt like they were saying, unless you have a court order, you don’t exist.”
Susi has said that applications involving estrangement are reviewed on a case-by-case basis by a specialist assessment team who are dedicated to giving them the “care and thorough consideration required around such a sensitive issue”. Applicants are asked to share documentary evidence of the estrangement. While accepted evidence can include a court order or a letter from a social worker or Tusla, it has said that other documents may help provide the required level of evidence.
Advocates, meanwhile, say greater public understanding is vital. “Almost everyone knows someone affected by estrangement,” says Cassin. “We just do not use the word. People say, ‘Oh, we don’t talk to that uncle, or my partner hasn’t spoken to her dad in years.’ That is estrangement, but we frame it differently. If we can start naming it, we can start making policies that don’t leave these students behind.”
For Ní Dhomhnaill, the memory of living week to week, unsure if she could afford to graduate, is still raw. The burden of trying to prove her circumstances, she says, only added to the struggle. “No student should have to fight that hard just to get an education,”