The students summer jobs scheme was advertised widely in the national press and in student union publications in mid-April 2001. Posters advertising the scheme together with information leaflets and application forms were sent to student union offices in the various colleges around the country. Forms were also available in all social welfare local offices.
As in previous years a large volume of applications were received in the week before the closing date which was 29 June 2001. Late cases are accepted where the application is shown to have been late for reasons beyond the control of the applicant. Some 306 applications were received after the closing date and five cases were accepted following this process. These applications were then processed in the normal fashion after acceptance and separate details of the people involved were not maintained. The five claims which were allowed could only be identified by a manual check of over 6,000 files without any guarantee that these claims would be identified.