Ms Jacinta Stewart:

I have said we want the students to get their grants. Unfortunately, we must go through a process, and that is proving difficult. However, I do not want any student to drop out or any student who is entitled to a grant not to receive it. I cannot say that more sincerely than I am actually saying it.

We have a process in place. Deputy Bannon raised the issue of local information. The staff in the citizen information centres were trained and we worked with local guidance counsellors in the schools to ensure that, in so far as it was possible, we were providing the relevant information. Of course, I believe we could do this better. We have learned a considerable amount from this. We produced a video on YouTube to bring people through the process. We underestimated the complexity of the kinds of details required.

Consider the question on the Revenue Commissioners and the Department of Social Protection. All sorts of legal issues arise with regard to data protection. With regard to the CAO, it would take 18 months for us to be able to gain access to the documentation, and for the student to give permission for his or her information to be released. We must be really careful to honour the arrangement in place and to ensure we are not releasing information that we should not release and that we do not receive information that should not be released to us. However, we do want to award grants and are doing the best we can at this stage to ensure that.

We have already talked about how we increased the number of staff working on the backlog. In the initial stages, there was a return rate of 56%. There are still a number of people in the system in respect of whom documentation was sent back on a number of occasions because it was incomplete.

The amount of money involved in this is €350 million, which is what grants cost in this country. We must get the documentation right for next year. Again, I cannot emphasise this enough and I will give members a practical example. One issue we have pertains to P60 and P21 forms. People give us a P60 form but when one examines the P21 form, it transpires there is other income and we have to go back for that. We must go back for information like that all the time. I visited Abtran and went through the process from beginning to end. It is written on the flap of one envelope, "Please ensure you have signed the declaration". On opening the first one, the declaration was not signed. We must be much better at getting the message out but I do not want any student to leave college or to be in a position in which he or she is obliged to do so.