Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)

I am taking this Adjournment matter on behalf of my colleague, the Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe. I thank the Senator for giving me this opportunity to outline the Department's plans in regard to applications by students for student grants.

As the Senator will be aware, the Department funds four maintenance grant schemes for third level and further education students. These are the higher education grants scheme, the vocational education committees scholarship scheme, the third level maintenance grants scheme for trainees and the maintenance grant scheme for students attending post-leaving certificate courses. The higher education grants scheme is administered by the local authorities and the other three schemes are administered by vocational education committees.

The Department is actively engaged in a programme of administrative and legislative reform of student grants. The overall objective of this programme of legislative and administrative reform is to facilitate the introduction of significant service level improvements in the administration of student grants, thus providing for greater consistency of application, improved client accessibility and timely delivery of grants to those who need them most. It will include guaranteed timeframes for the assessment of grants and more efficient arrangements for handling applications. It is envisaged that, when fully implemented, the administration of student grants will be a significantly more customer-oriented system involving a more simplified and accessible application system.

The Student Support Bill provides for the transfer of responsibility for student grants to the VEC sector. In the existing budgetary situation, resources are not available to advance transition to new administrative arrangements in the immediate future. However, it is not possible to say definitively at this point when new administrative arrangements can be put in place and the Minister is keen, in light of the commitment to put all student grants on a statutory footing, to provide a statutory basis for all student grants for the intervening period and to advance improvements to the current administrative arrangements. Therefore, the Department is endeavouring to progress at the earliest possible date to a single scheme of grants as provided for in the Bill while further exploring the options for administrative streamlining in the context of budgetary considerations and the Government's overall programme of public service reform, Transforming Public Services.

The Department is actively engaged with VECs and local authorities on several initiatives through several technical working groups, which will bring improvements on an incremental basis. The comprehensive and user-friendly website, www.studentfinance.ie, an initiative of the Higher Education Authority, HEA, and funded by the Department, is already proving to be valuable in helping students to access information on the various grants available for further and higher education. In addition to providing information on the grants administered by the local authorities and vocational education committees, it also offers information on the back to education allowance, the student assistance fund and the fund for students with disabilities. This considerable store of information is proving to be of great benefit.

In streamlining the process of applying for a student grant, this year for the first time a downloadable application form was available on the www.studentfinance.ie website. A student can print the application form and complete it in full, or alternatively download the application form, complete it on-screen and print it. Course acceptance forms, which must accompany the application form where a student has accepted a place on an approved course, are also available to print from the www.studentfinance.ie website.

A business process re-engineering exercise is being conducted in respect of the administration of student grants. This exercise, being undertaken as part of the Government's Transforming Public Services initiative, will involve a deep-rooted analysis of the existing schemes, services, processes and procedures to identify the improvements that can be made. It is designed to effect an enhancement both of the quality of customer service and the efficiency and value for money of service delivery. Alongside this initiative, the Department is engaged in the development of a new, more user-friendly application form for student grants, which we all welcome. As part of the overall programme of reform, it is planned to make application forms available a good deal earlier in the year such that students can submit grant applications following completion of the CAO process, as suggested by Senator Keaveney. It is also planned to introduce earlier closing dates such that the process of assessing grant applications can be brought forward significantly to enable early decisions on grant applications to be made by the awarding authorities. I thank the Senator once again for raising this matter.