Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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556. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of persons who accepted an offer of a place through the CAO in 2019 and 2020, respectively; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [7982/21]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Universities and Institutes of Technology are autonomous and determine their own procedures for admission. The CAO process applications for undergraduate, and some postgraduate, courses on their behalf.

Decisions on admissions are made by the higher education institutions who then instruct the CAO to make offers to successful candidates. Therefore neither I nor my Department have a function in relation to such matters and information on application figures is held by the CAO, not by my Department.

According to figures published by the CAO, the net number of acceptances at the end of Offer Round 5 was 49,657 in 2020 compared to 47,412 in 2019, an increase of 5%. Please note that these figures do not include acceptances arising from the results of the 2020 Leaving Certificate which were released earlier this month.

Net CAO acceptances, 2019 vs 2020