Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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381. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills further to Parliamentary Question No. 545 of 28 September 2021, if he will provide further detail and an explanation for the increase in the number of cases of overpayments discovered under the reason, information omitted from application; the breakdown of the type of information omitted; the number of discoveries of information omitted from application in each month throughout the academic year 2020-2021, in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [49192/21]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The Student Grant Scheme is administered by the centralised national grant awarding authority SUSI (Student Universal Support Ireland), a business unit of CDETB (City of Dublin Education and Training Board), on behalf of the Department. The decision on eligibility for a student grant is a matter for SUSI to determine.

As part of SUSI’s internal processes, Post Assessment Quality Reviews are carried out on applications both for the current academic year and all prior academic years and any underpayments or overpayments are addressed.

In academic year 2020/21, it was found that 912 students omitted information from their application form which resulted in them receiving a payment for which they were not eligible. The majority of these applicants were renewal applicants. The renewal application form asks applicants a number of questions in relation to whether or not there have been any changes to their circumstances since their previous application including course or college details and family and income details. The applicants indicated no change to their circumstances however subsequently were found to have had a change which affected their eligibility for funding in line with the Student Support Scheme 2020.

Please see below breakdown of information omitted from the application form which led to the overpayment and the month in which they were identified:

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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382. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills further to Parliamentary Question No. 545 of 28 of September 2021, if he will provide further detail and an explanation for the increase in the number of cases of overpayments discovered under the reason eligibility; the breakdown of the reasons students were deemed ineligible in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [49193/21]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The Student Grant Scheme is administered by the centralised national grant awarding authority SUSI (Student Universal Support Ireland), a business unit of CDETB (City of Dublin Education and Training Board), on behalf of the Department. The decision on eligibility for a student grant is a matter for SUSI to determine.

As part of SUSI’s internal processes, Post Assessment Quality Reviews are carried out on applications both for the current academic year and all prior academic years and any underpayments or overpayments are addressed.

In academic year 2020/21, it was found that 912 students omitted information from their application form which resulted in them receiving a payment for which they were not eligible. The majority of these applicants were renewal applicants. The renewal application form asks applicants a number of questions in relation to whether or not there have been any changes to their circumstances since their previous application including course or college details and family and income details. The applicants indicated no change to their circumstances however subsequently were found to have had a change which affected their eligibility for funding in line with the Student Support Scheme 2020.

Please see below breakdown of information omitted from the application form which led to the overpayment and the month in which they were identified: