Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Some 42% of all third level students are in receipt of a grant. Last year, the student grant administration system was transferred from 66 different bodies, including county and city councils and VECs, to one body, namely, SUSI. I have acknowledged, as has the Minister for Education and Skills on a number of occasions, that there were problems with this. What is important is that the lessons learned in that transition process have resulted in changes being made, including an increase of 23 in the number of staff in SUSI involved in the processing of applications. In addition, a review was undertaken by Accenture of the way in which the process operated. As I said earlier, the recommendations made by Accenture are being implemented. Some of those recommendations involve earlier processing of applications and an earlier-----

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