Mr. Brian Power:

There is some discretion in terms of repeat period of study, particularly for exceptional circumstances. A normal repeat period is where a person, for example, may have failed an exam. It often transpires in the course of a case being dealt with by SUSI or the student grant appeals board that there are extenuating circumstances, the illness of a student or a parent, for example. My understanding is that part of the reason the appeals rate is quite high, at least at the student grant appeals board end, is that new information is often introduced at that stage, because of such circumstances. That is from a discretionary piece which is in that.

There is still some discretion in the new single scheme, for example, in terms of the classes of applicant that would be considered. This applies particularly to the requirement that a student wishing to be classed as an independent student must supply sufficient information to establish to the satisfaction of the awarding authority that they are eligible to be classed as such. There is a certain amount of discretion on the part of the awarding authority to accept the evidence of independent students. There is some very compelling acceptable evidence, such as where a person has clear living arrangements, for example, where they have ESB bills or other utility bills in their name. We are handling students who very often have other arrangements, so there is some discretion built into that.

There is also discretion under article 21 regarding persons whose income is to be considered. Some discretion can be exercised, for example, where it is established to the satisfaction of the awarding authority that a dependent student's parents have been separated but no divorce or legal separation has occurred. Coming back to the area we have dealt with, namely, irreconcilable estrangement, the awarding authority also has latitude regarding being satisfied. As Mr. Doyle has said, and as we pointed out, as we evolve, our objective is to ensure that people who are genuinely estranged from their parents are able to access the grant system.

A question was raised about the overall number of appeals and the 19% overturn. We would caution that those are the overturns in terms of the number of appeals that end up with the student grant appeals board, which tend to be the most difficult and problematic cases overall. The most pertinent statistic here is the percentage of applicants who end up before the board. As a percentage of all the applicants each year, that would work out at about 0.4% overall, which, compared with other means-tested schemes, is actually quite good.