The certificate is framed and hung on a narrow wall at the end of a corridor in Kuxi Ghai’s small apartment in Portmarnock.
“There’s my little diploma,” she says, pointing at it with a bashful smile.
Below the diploma is a list of good deeds that Ghai encourages her young son Ishaan to do – like random acts of kindness.
For Ghai, affording the part-time course at the King’s Inns wasn’t easy, she says. And she still needs to come up with the money for another round of training to qualify as a barrister.
Part of her motivation, says Ghai, is that she wants to provide better for her son. “It’s not so much the higher social status of having a higher income; it’s what higher income is going to access for your child.”
Like private health insurance for when her little one is sick, she says.
She wants that better income for all immigrants who have been through break-ups or divorces in Ireland and, as a result, had to flip their grounds of residency from being the partner of an Irish citizen to the parent of an Irish-citizen kid.
But right now, there’s a major obstacle on the way to third-level education and the higher-income jobs that can open up for this group: they are excluded from accessing the third-level education subsidy, SUSI.
This despite the piles of evidence as to how lone parents struggle to afford life, with low employment rates and high rates of in-work poverty.
Since 2021, Ghai has been fighting to unlock access to SUSI for migrant lone parents like herself, teaming up with Social Democrats TD Gary Gannon, who has flagged the issue in the Dáil over and over again.
“I have raised this three years straight now and it hasn’t been addressed,” said Gannon by phone on Friday.
A spokesperson for the Department of Further and Higher Education said it plans to explore the idea of including other immigration statuses in an upcoming “annual options paper”.
That helps it understand financial implications of policy changes before planning a new budget. “Any change to the scheme may have a cost implication and all options considered must be consistent with overall Department policy,” they said.
You can’t go your own way
Ghai is involved in Spark, the advocacy group for lone parents.
Through the group, she’s come across many women grappling to pay steep third-level fees, she says.
All competent independent women, Ghai says. “Who have managed to secure themselves in terms of housing, in terms of the child, in terms of basic needs.”
Often women whose kids are now in school, she says, and they’re thinking, what’s next?
But if their dream job needs a college degree and they didn’t go to university here, they may have to snuff out any sparks of ambition, she says. “Not all degrees translate over.”
If they were a lawyer in their country of birth, they still have to train to qualify to practise here, says Ghai, who was born in Kenya.
They’re pushed into doing scraping-by jobs that they’re not mad about, she says.
In more serious cases, she says, they may opt to stay in abusive or unfulfilling relationships just to afford college. Because partnered with an Irish citizen, they would still qualify for the education subsidy.
That ramps up pressures to stick around that some Middle Eastern and African women especially may already feel, Ghai says. “Culturally, we don’t leave just because we’re not happy.”
She says it upsets her that migrant women often have to overcome serious hardships and fight the current to get into dream jobs – and even to keep doing what they did and were good at before they moved here.
“It seems that there are only certain professions that we have been deemed worthy of,” said Ghai.
A 2020 survey by the New Communities Partnership found that only about one-third of the migrant women surveyed who had jobs said their work was related to their education.
“Many of those who are employed are either underemployed or working in areas unrelated to their studies,” it says.
How come?
Ghai says she just can’t wrap her head around why people with immigration statuses based on being a parent of an Irish citizen kid are excluded from SUSI.
If you’re allowed in the country because you’re a parent of an Irish citizen, Ghai says, why shouldn’t it be easier for you to go to college, get a good job and provide better for the kid?
“And anyone we have raised the issue with says that doesn’t make sense,” says Ghai.
Gannon, the Social Democrats TD, says he couldn’t figure out the rationale either, even after sitting through Dáil debates about the issue. “I don’t understand what it could be.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Further and Higher Education did not directly respond to a query asking what the rationale is.
But they said that it regularly checks in with the Department of Justice about different kinds of immigration statuses and their eligibility for grants. “And will continue to do so.”
The Department of Justice has said it doesn’t have a say in policy decisions around access to third-level education and its subsidies.
Ghai plans to keep fighting, she says. After three years, she and Gannon have made a tiny bit of progress.
The Minister for Further and Higher Education, Simon Harris, a Fine Gael TD, has agreed to meet Ghai to listen. Gannon says he’s optimistic.
“Once Kuxi gets into a room with Mr Harris, she can demonstrate very clearly how this impacts her and others like her,” he said.