Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 6 November 2012
294. Deputy Pearse Doherty asked the Minister for Education and Skills if he will provide in tabular form, the number of students who have applied, those that have been granted and those that have been refused the student grant for 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [47540/12]
View answerAs the Deputy is aware, all new applications for the 2012/13 academic year are being processed by SUSI, the new centralised grant awarding authority. Continuing students who are renewing their grant for attendance on an existing course with their existing awarding authority, which will be either a local authority or a VEC, will continue to have their applications processed by the relevant grant-awarding authority. A survey completed by the the grant awarding authorities in January each year provides details in relation to processing of grant applications. The accompanying table provides details supplied to my Department by the grant awarding authorities as at week ending the third week of January for 2009, 2010 and 2011. Further decisions in later months may have resulted in additional awards. In relation to the 2012/13 academic year SUSI has received just over 66,000 completed applications for student grants this year to date. Approximately 18,000 applications are now complete and have either been provisionally awarded, awarded or refused. This includes 9,000 applications which have been refused and 9,000 which have been awarded, or awarded pending submission of final course details by the student. The processing position for the 2012/13 academic year in relation to renewals as at 19 October 2012 is that the 66 grant-awarding authorities have dealt with 40,286 renewal applications. A total of 31,049 applications have been awarded and 1,958 applications have been approved. The data in relation to renewals has been compiled from information supplied to my Department by the 66 grant-awarding authorities The Deputy will appreciate that the data in relation to the 2012/13 academic year is not directly comparable as it does not cover the same time frame. The statistics for the previous years are as of the third week in January and therefore include three additional months processing by the various awarding authorities. In addition, the migration of the new applications to SUSI has enabled the 66 grant-awarding authorities to process renewal applications on a more efficient basis - these are generally more straightforward and require significantly less documentary evidence.
66 Grant Awarding Authorities – Processing Position as per January Survey
|
2009/10 Academic Year (Position as at 21/01/2010) |
Total |
Awarded |
Refused |
|
New applications |
57,133 |
30,591 |
5,730 |
|
Renewals |
36,391 |
30,969 |
882 |
2010-2011
|
2010/11 Academic Year (Position as at 21/01/2011) |
Total |
Awarded |
Refused |
|
New applications |
62,040 |
31,239 |
8,065 |
|
Renewals |
44,495 |
34,678 |
1,240 |
2011-2012
|
2011/12 Academic Year (Position as at 21/01/2012) |
Total |
Awarded |
Refused |
|
New applications |
66,479 |
32,152 |
6,932 |
|
Renewals |
45,082 |
37,874 |
1,952 |
Applications not decided as at third week in January each year would include applications where documentation was outstanding, incomplete applications, applications transferred to another assessing body and applications yet to be processed.
