Mr. Brian Power:

I will comment briefly on the HEAR scheme. It is not always appreciated that it is not a scheme run by the Department; it is run by the third level institutions. They have a legal responsibility for admissions and they came together to put the HEAR scheme in place. The Department has been quite supportive of it, and there has been support from the HEA also. We do not have the statistics on the scheme because it is not one of ours but we can certainly monitor it with the HEAR implementation team, which currently works out of the Irish Universities Association premises. The scheme assists thousands of students in getting into courses with lower points by recognising the disadvantage they may have suffered, educationally or financially, previously in their education overall. That is important. However, the most important part of the HEAR scheme from the perspective of individual students is that we try to use the access measure funding that is made available by the HEA to institutions to provide post-entry support for students. Thus, it can be ensured that, having gained entry to higher education, students will not fall out of it for want of internal supports. That is what we are trying to do in that regard.

I will move on to the improvements recommended by Accenture to the grant-processing system overall. Consider the improvements from the external review that were implemented. The implementation of the recommendation was undertaken by the CDETB in agreement with the Department and, as appropriate, with the Department of Expenditure and Reform because there are costs associated with those improvements. Many of the Accenture recommendations have been implemented, including those relating to streamlining and simplifying the student grant process; strengthening SUSI’s resourcing, programme governance and organisational structure; further developing communications and campaign management; further developing operational indicators and reporting; strengthening systems supporting the grant process; improving operational management and management reporting; enhancing operational controls; and formalising support from an expert group facilitating the transfer of expertise on the scheme to SUSI.

Also in prospect, and planned, is a new ICT system for SUSI. As members probably know, the system ran initially with a combination of four or five individual ICT systems that were put together at a time when nothing else could be afforded. We are moving to a space where we can have a new ICT system that should be able to do much more in terms of means testing, and with more automation. Perhaps the representatives of SUSI would like to comment on that also.