Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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106. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the total amount of repayments due to grant overpayments over 2020-2021 academic year sought by SUSI; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42787/20]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The complex nature of the student grant scheme means that there is a risk that some students receive grant payments for which they are not eligible, including for reasons beyond the direct control of SUSI.

To mitigate the risk of overpayments, SUSI implements procedural and system-based controls within its application assessment and grant payment operations. A highly developed quality assurance programme is implemented within the assessment process and a focussed programme of independent post-assessment reviews are also performed across targeted risk areas.

The critical objective for SUSI is to identify and rectify errors on a timely basis before a grant is awarded and thus before any overpayment can arise. Issues identified from quality and post-assessment reviews are fed back into the assessment process through feedback and training on a current basis.

Where overpayments do arise, SUSI has a formal Overpayments Policy and implements a structured process of debt management to seek their recovery. This process includes portfolio analysis/reporting of the overall debt profile and structured interaction with students as debtors. To date, for the 2020/21 academic year, the total overpayments stand at €25,542.76.

If an individual applicant considers that she/he has been unjustly refused a student grant, or that the rate of grant awarded is not the correct one, she/he may appeal, in the first instance, to SUSI. Applicants may also appeal against decisions made by SUSI in relation to overpayments.

Where an individual applicant has had an appeal turned down in writing by an appeals officer in SUSI and remains of the view that the scheme has not been interpreted correctly in his/her case, an appeal may be submitted to the independent Student Grants Appeals Board within the required timeframe. Such appeals can be made by the appellant on line via www.studentgrantappeals.ie