Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge that there were serious difficulties in SUSI's first year, but efforts have since been made to improve the situation and to speed up the process. The reason for the various appeal procedures is to be fair to students. However, I agree with the Deputy that the number of appeals is high. We have an opportunity to review the scheme each year and I have been looking at it to see if we can make some improvements this year. We will publish the scheme for this year in the near future.

We need to keep the scheme under review because it is still relatively new and the award of grants is important to each student. In the early years of the scheme, the number of appeals was significantly higher than would have been expected, but the system is under continuous review.

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