Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms Stewart for her presentation. While I am not a member of the joint committee, I am aware that SUSI has an ongoing relationship with the committee and Ms Stewart has appeared before it on a number of occasions.

No other organisation has created a greater burden of work for my constituency office than SUSI. We have found it virtually impossible to deal with the organisation, as have the students and parents who have had to interact with it. I do not propose to focus this discussion on my office or any other office. I will focus instead on the impact of the current problems on students. I am still dealing with cases in which grant applications have not been processed. Students have suffered the ignominy of being refused entry to the library of their college or having to make special arrangements to take examinations. Some will not receive their examination results because their cases have not been concluded. This has a major impact on their lives and those of their parents and causes great trauma. There are people at their wits' end as a result of this mess. While I may be concerned about the efforts being made by my staff or Ms Stewart's staff, that is not the main problem. The issue here is the lives of young people who are trying to get an education that will enable them to enter the workforce. Members who know me will agree that I do not engage in grandstanding. It does not give me pleasure to raise these issues.

It is the lives of young people that are hugely affected and hugely traumatised by the mistakes of the City of Dublin VEC for expressing an interest in something which, clearly, it was not ready for. I am amazed it would have sought a contract for which it was ill-prepared. That it should bring Accenture in half way through a process is mind-boggling.

One of my questions to Ms Jacinta Stewart is who is taking responsibility for making that expression of interest and being so poorly resourced, so poorly informed and so poorly structured to deliver that service? I like the idea of the public service taking on more work. I liked the idea that it did not fall into the hands of a private organisation because I believe in public service. However, I have to say the respect for public service is eroded every day when an organisation such as this fails in such a monumental way to reach the standard it would have been expected to reach. Is there a service level agreement in place between the CDVEC and the Department of Education and Skills? Has any discussion taken place with the Minister and the Department in respect of the breaches of that service level agreement? Has the organisation been penalised in terms of the payment from the Department, based on its failure to meet the service that would have been expected? Does such an agreement exist? Perhaps it does not. I do not want to put all the blame on the organisation. There is an equal burden of blame on the Minister and the Department of Education and Skills for accepting in good faith what it proposed to deliver. It might be excusable if for some reason the organisation had no knowledge or history of dealing with grants but it did, therefore, it should have been able to put in place an appropriate model to meet the standard. Will Ms Stewart please explain who will take responsibility? I will be straight, has Ms Stewart considered her position as a result of the failure?