Mr. John Conroy:

On the earlier question about applying before 1 August, one does not have to have selected one's college or course to apply for a grant. We communicate that from year 1, and the previous authorities would have done so too. The idea is that one gets to an awarded stage and gets paid when one selects one's final college. Our connections in particular with the CAO this year will make that process far more efficient than it was last year when they had to finish the final course acceptance forms. As a result of the fact that one can make an application and subsequently not go to college, there are approximately 14,000 people we assessed who did not proceed to further education, for several reasons. In some cases they did not get enough points, some could not afford it,even with the grants, or they were just over the income thresholds as it was. We made 50,000 telephone calls between January and the end of March asking each of those 14,000 were they proceeding with their applications or whether they were cancelled or refused. That is where that figure comes from. While potentially there are many who were refused on the basis of household income, a large proportion were the clear-out from the latter half of the year of people who had never intended to proceed with their applications in the first place.

This year all our communications and information are geared towards helping people through the thresholds. The income earner on student finance linked to SUSI.ie will help them with that but we will also contact people much earlier in the process to ensure that they are going to proceed to college. The total figure of 39,000 is correct for cancellations or refusals but it includes a cohort of 15,000 who applied but never responded to our initial request for documents. The system required us to contact them to get confirmation of cancellation. We could not do it arbitrarily.