Mr. Philip Connolly:

I will answer the questions in the order they were asked, beginning with those posed by Senator Ruane. Family size does dictate whether someone gets a grant or a higher rate of grant, the income thresholds increase the more children there are in a family. If there are more children going to third level or further education, the thresholds also increase.

As to other class and who else should qualify, I cannot comment too much on that but the most common reason for refusal of an application is income and we review that every year. It is important to note that we have a special high-quality team that deals with the estrangement and affidavit issues. It is not a question of whether we accept particular types of documents we do consider the whole case and try to work with the students to give them the support if we can. We do consider inclusion and try if we can to give the grant to the student and we work with the student to do that. I cannot deal with the individual case to which reference was made because I am not aware of it. However, I will state that do not accept certain types of documents because we do consider the entire case.

The question of the grant following the person into private colleges, rather than following the institution, has come up several times. Each year all the courses and institutions are prescribed by the Minister and we work on that basis. In terms of applying for a SUSI grant, we have worked with the CAO over the past couple of years to make clear what courses will not qualify. This is so that people do not select courses thinking they might be able to apply for support. We have tried to work with the CAO to flag those who will not be eligible on the back of the Wake Up SUSI campaign.