Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I accept that Ms Stewart sincerely does not want to see a situation in which any student who is entitled to a grant is not awarded it, and she does not want to see any student drop out as a result of this fiasco, but the reality is that students are being forced to drop out. There are students who are now getting letters from their colleges asking for late fees because they have not been able to pay the charges. There are students who are being denied access to libraries. We have an e-mail from one student who, because he or she was denied access to a laboratory, was unable to hand in a project on time and is being penalised.

Mr. Prizeman's statement that documentation has not been lost simply does not correspond with what we are hearing from students. It is incredible that only one complaint has been issued. I do not accept that figure. SUSI gave a guarantee that every piece of documentation is scanned when it is received by the company in Cork. How does SUSI know that is the case? What checks has it put in place to ensure this happens?

SUSI is relying on the assurance of an outside agency that the documents are not being lost. What procedures has it put in place to ensure that is the case? The information we have received at this meeting does not tally with the information we have received from hundreds of students. Somebody is making a mistake and SUSI may have been misinformed by the company that is scanning the documents.

Students who live 150 km from their colleges are receiving the wrong grants. Can we be given figures for the number of cases that have gone to review rather than appeal? I am particularly interested in cases relating to adjacency and non-adjacency.

I again ask the witnesses to acknowledge that the system is not working. That will not do anything to help those students who are still waiting but at least we would have an admission of the problem by SUSI.