In January 2011, my Department issued an Expression of Interest invitation to the VECs, local authorities or other public bodies who might be interested in taking on administrative responsibility for the centralised student grants awarding and payments function. A total of 10 proposals were received. These proposals were examined by an independent selection panel against the evaluation criteria which were an integral part of the Expression of Interest procedure.
On the basis of the review carried out by the panel at the initial stage of the process, four proposals were short-listed for oral presentation. Following oral presentation these proposals were assigned a ranking depending on their relative strengths under each of the evaluation criteria leading to the preferred proposal.
The selection panel evaluated the proposals under each of the following criteria:
- Organisational capacity to perform the function
- Experience in dealing with comparable schemes/services
- Existing core management, expertise and resources available to be deployed to the function.
- Capacity to deliver strong cost and efficiency benefits
- Overall quality of the proposal for delivery of a central student grants function.
Following this process, the selection panel made a recommendation to the Minister for Education and Skills on the preferred proposal which was the City of Dublin VEC proposal to establish Student Universal Support Ireland (SUSI) as a unit of that VEC. While indicative delivery costs were provided by each of the bodies, they were not as such tender prices, as this was an expression of interest process. These indicative costs were considered under the evaluation criteria which examined the capacity of the bodies to deliver strong cost and efficiency benefits. Each of the short - listed proposals was marked under all of the evaluation criteria heading. An external review of Student Universal Support Ireland's business processes is currently being undertaken to inform improvements in the system for the 2013/14 academic year. The proposed timeline for completion of the review is the end of this month.
