John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for selecting this matter and for allowing me raise it. August and September are life-changing months for second level students who are moving on to third level. They get their leaving certificate results in August and get their college offers later that month or in early September. They then have to go and look for accommodation and people with whom to share it. It is a traumatic time not just for the students, but for their parents. The big issue for them at this time is the application for a grant. This has been a major issue over the years. As elected representatives, we all know there have been difficulties over the year, from the time there were 66 different bodies awarding grants. The good point with regard to so many bodies being involved was that the issue was local and personal.

I welcome and support the many innovative ideas the Minister for Education and Skills has introduced since he took up his position and am not raising this issue to knock him or anything else. The SUSI concept and the centralisation of the awarding of grants is good if it works smoothly. I welcomed it when announced and still have no problem with it. However, the concern I had and still have is that there may be issues such as those we had when the medical card application system was centralised. In other words, I am concerned about the bottlenecks that occur in the system, the way the process becomes impersonal, documents being lost and the resulting delays in dealing with applications. The Minister facilitated a briefing from SUSI earlier in the year and in its presentation the system looked wonderful and it seemed every angle was covered.

I raise this issue to be helpful rather than to knock the system, because there are teething problems. This year I have received more queries in September and October on the issue of grants than in the past number of years. These concern the delay in processing grant applications and in hearing appeals. I welcome the e-mail service provided for public representatives by SUSI. However, the problem is that the answers returned, which are delivered promptly, do not provide any information whatsoever. If they do not give us information, they do not give students information. If the system was working well, we would not be getting people raising this issue in our offices or at our clinics, but it is not working well.

Let me give an example of the response I received last week, which is what prompted me to raise this issue. The response stated: "Documents have been received in support of this application and they are currently awaiting review." This is just a one-line answer that gives no indication whether the application will be considered in the next two or three weeks or whenever.

I want to justify what I am doing by saying I received two answers this morning, within eight minutes of each other, after this was submitted. The first of them gave me an answer and the second gave me an advanced answer. Maybe the fact that I raised it helped me in some way to get those answers. I acknowledge that. Ideally, it would be better if applications were made sooner. I know of a student who was not offered a college place until the middle of September. In other words, he got it on the third award. It is impossible to submit one's application early if one does not have a college place. What is the view at a more global level of the experience to date? Will new things be put in place next year? Could a tracking system like that used in the passport service be used to allow students to track their applications without clogging up the system with queries to which they should be able to get easy answers?

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