Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I join the Chairperson in thanking Ms Stewart and her team for coming in here today to discuss this situation. It is at crisis stage in that 46,000 students have not been told yet whether they will be awarded a grant and only a small percentage of those would have been paid. How many students have been paid their grant at this stage? I do not have to tell Ms Stewart or her team the trouble and hardship this is causing for students across the country. Ms Stewart outlined that SUSI has dealt with 175,000 telephone calls in the recent period. She and her team more than anyone else will be aware of the stresses students and their families are under from not being able to get their grants yet.

Unfortunately, a new system has been set up replacing the job of work that was previously done by 66 authorities, 33 VECs and 33 county councils, and this work has now been given to one national organisation to do centrally. My party and I do not have a problem with the centralisation of this system, however, we have a very serious problem with how the Minister has gone about doing it in conjunction with SUSI and about delivering it. Unfortunately, many students now face Christmas still not knowing whether they will be awarded a grant and based on the evidence before us many of those students will not be paid their grant until into the new year.

Ms Stewart outlined that 20,000 applications are complete at award stage and she might break that down. She also outlined that 25,000 are being processed. Previous answers given by the Minister indicated that those being processed are just starting to be checked to see if information is missing. Also, in replies to questions tabled by myself and other Deputies, we have been told that the expectation is that 40% of those packs will be returned to students as incomplete. Those students who have not yet been told their documentation is incomplete have to wait to hear from that from SUSI and then send the information back to SUSI and we are only five weeks from Christmas. SUSI is awaiting documentation packs back from 20,000 students. I know from dealing with students that in many cases they have sent in the information but it has been lost and they have been told by SUSI that it has been lost. Despite sending in the full information the first time they were asked for it, they have been asked to send the complete packs back in again because their information has not been found or SUSI did not keep a proper record of it. That is a very serious issue and I am sure other Deputies will have similar accounts.

Ms Stewart mentioned that SUSI had been processing packs at the rate of 800 a day and that this has increased to 1,300 a day. I would question that because the figure we were given for the number of applications processed two weeks ago was 18,000 and the figure Ms Stewart has given us today is 20,350. That means that only an additional 2,350 were processed in a period of two weeks. I do not see how the rate she gave us can be the case.

She might outline the way the number of staff was increased from when SUSI was set up in June to now. She told us that at the support and review stage the number of staff has increased 39 to 79.