Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 17 October 2012
120. Deputy John O'Mahony asked the Minister for Education and Skills the number of applications received to date by Student Universal Support Ireland for student grant scheme 2012; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [45074/12]
View answer121. Deputy John O'Mahony asked the Minister for Education and Skills the number of applicants that have received approval for their students grants from Student Universal Support Ireland; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [45075/12]
View answer122. Deputy John O'Mahony asked the Minister for Education and Skills the number of applications waiting to be approved by Student Universal Support Ireland for student grant scheme 2012; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [45076/12]
View answerI propose to take Questions Nos. 120 to 122, inclusive, together. Some 56,604 on-line student grant applications were submitted to Student Universal Ireland (SUSI) by the official closing date which was 31st August 2012. SUSI is currently accepting applications after the official closing date in line with the discretion given to them under the Student Grant Scheme 2012. An additional 8,575 late applications have been received since the closing date. Priority is being given to applications received before the official closing date. SUSI has completed initial assessments on a total of 60,005 of applications which have been approved to move to the documentary evidence stage of the process. 5,174 applications submitted after the official closing date are awaiting initial assessment. The Deputy will appreciate that all of the required documentary evidence must be submitted to enable a final decision to be made on an application. Decisions have issued in respect of 12,670 applications, 3,104 of which have already been awarded a grant and 9,566 of which have either been refused or cancelled. In 15,459 cases no documentation has yet been furnished by the applicants in response to SUSI's request. In addition, in a very significant number of cases an incomplete set of documentation was received and SUSI has had to make further requests to these students to submit the outstanding information. Where the applicant has not yet returned the outstanding documentation, SUSI is continuing to contact the applicants by email and text message to enable the applications to proceed to final decision stage.20,844 document packs are currently in the process of being validated by SUSI – some 83% of these are cases where the initial pack submitted by the applicant was incomplete. Of the packs already validated, 4,283 are awaiting final decision, and a further 3,791 are at the final award stage. Every effort is being made to ensure that students get decisions on their grant applications and are paid as soon as possible.
