Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 19 October 2017
94. Deputy Eamon Scanlon asked the Minister for Education and Skills if he will investigate an exceptional circumstances case in respect of a person (details supplied) in County Sligo in which all documentation relating to the application was submitted to SUSI and which SUSI cannot now locate; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44367/17]
View answerFollowing enquiries made by Officials from my Department with SUSI, I am advised that the student in this case applied for renewal of her student grant in April 2017 and immediately received an affirmative award decision from SUSI on the basis of her indication in applying that she progressing into the third year of her course in the 2017-18 academic year and that there had been no change in her circumstances. The student subsequently contacted SUSI on 31 August 2017 to advise that she would in fact be repeating the second year of her course and, as repeat years of study are not eligible for student grant funding save in exceptional circumstances, the student sought to avail of this exception.
On this basis, the relevant application form for exceptional circumstances consideration was issued to the student by SUSI on 5 September and was returned from the student with supporting documents on 10 September. The case has been reviewed meanwhile and a final decision on the application is currently pending and imminent within the next week.
SUSI implements procedures for the timely, sensitive and confidential handling of exceptional circumstances applications by students who have already received a grant decision. Exceptional circumstances cases are processed by a dedicated assessment team in direct communication with the student only (or another party to the application, where appropriate). The issues identified by the Deputy regarding the receipt of documents by SUSI and regarding his communications with SUSI in this case reflect the sensitive and confidential nature of the exceptional circumstances application handling procedure that is implemented by SUSI.
SUSI has reconfirmed that, while the associated documents as submitted by the student and also those as submitted on her behalf were indeed received, such sensitive documents are not made generally available for viewing to staff outside of the exceptional circumstances team. For this reason, while the main SUSI support desk was able to confirm to the student that documents had been received, they were unable to confirm the details of those actual documents that had been received.
Similarly, regarding the Deputy’s direct communications with the dedicated assessment team, SUSI has advised that it was not possible for the team to respond to the Deputy regarding the case in the absence of the formal third party access authorisation that is required in compliance with data protection measures surrounding the handling of sensitive personal information. This authority was received on 2 October 2017.
I am informed also that in order to address the issues that the Deputy has highlighted, SUSI has modified its procedures for the handling of exceptional circumstances applications so that the receipt of documents from students, or emails such as those forwarded by the Deputy in the past two weeks, in such cases is now acknowledged at the point of receipt rather than at the point at which the application is reached in order of priority for reassessment.
