Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

In respect of the case the Deputy has just cited about a postgraduate student not being able to access the results, that postgraduate student would never have been a client of SUSI. Consequently, SUSI has nothing to do with the difficulties in which that person finds him or herself because SUSI only addressed first-year students who applied for the first time. SUSI only came into operation for undergraduates last year for the first time. The rest of those students were dealing with 66 separate bodies that were brought together. Incidentally, they were not nationalised. The Deputy's County Donegal colleague brought in the legislation to combine all the separate 66 individual grant-aiding bodies. In many cases, the actual performance was worse than the average outcome. There is a problem with SUSI, which is the reason a special study was made of it and is the reason I am making available additional resources. Three senior staff members are coming in, as well as 23 whole-time equivalent posts to process the material. However, if there are outstanding people who have not received a decision from SUSI but who have completed all the information SUSI needs to make a decision, I will make that inquiry and will revert to the Deputy.

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