Mr. Tom Prizeman:

Students are sent a pack and are asked for documentation that could range from seven to 20 pieces. That pack goes back to a PO box for Abtran in Cork. The post is sent to a secure postal room and is then scanned. Currently, it is being scanned every day. In early September, there was a delay of three days before it was scanned because of the volume of documents. Every piece of documentation that comes in is scanned.

It then goes into a merging queue. The scanner picks up the application number which is then merged with the person’s application. When we investigated claims of lost documents, we checked it with Abtran to discover the documents were scanned but the system did not know they were for that three-day period until they were merged into the system.