Dr. Colm O'Reardon:

I thank the Deputy. It is a very important scheme. There are a couple of things to bear in mind. The Estimate for SUSI for 2022 would have been compiled in September 2021, at which time there would have been enormous uncertainty about a number of things. Of the €100 million underspend, approximately €50 million was a direct consequence of the Government decision to reduce the student contribution. That meant SUSI was paying out less money. However, money was being paid out from somewhere else in the Vote, so there is a €50 million element of that. There was also a very general contingency included in respect of Covid, which did not materialise as an issue. In terms of the remainder, there is no doubt that there is a difficulty certainly at that time and ongoing in estimating the number of students who would apply for and take up a SUSI grant. If we think about where we would have been in 2021, moving into the 2022 financial year, there was Covid, a lot of uncertainty about where the economy was, and a lot of uncertainty about student enrolments. That is the kernel of the problem. I am sorry, there are obviously the other issues that I mentioned, but there is a core problem in terms of being able to estimate or predict the number of people. In September 2021 we tried to estimate how many students would enrol for the 2021-22 financial year and then we tried to make an estimate for how many people might be likely to enrol in the 2022-23 financial year. It is an intrinsically difficult estimation process.