Delay in student grants driving students into debt-Crowe

Dublin South West TD, Seán Crowe, has called the delay in students receiving their university grants unacceptable and has called on the Education Minister, Ruairí Quinn, to unblock the system immediately.

Deputy Crowe said the SUSI online processing of student grants is clearly failing after Sinn Féin received a response to a parliamentary question from the Education Minister today which confirms that more than 52,430 grant applications are still being processed.

The Tallaght TD said:

“It is nearly November, yet thousands of students have not received their grants by the Student Universal Support Ireland (SUSI).

“In Dublin alone 13,114 grant applications have been received, 12,258 are still being processed, and a final decision has only been made on 2,754. This is not acceptable and is driving students into greater debt.

“The new SUSI on-line system was supposed to make the process of applying for a grant more efficient, but regrettably, there have been serious flaws which have resulted in delayed payments, poor communication and inadequate responses to applications and document submissions.

“The Minister for Education must introduce a clear tracking system that will enable students to know exactly at what stage their applications are at. A better designed more user friendly website would also help and extra resources need to be found to improve the briefing and training of Helpdesk staff who are doing their best under a system that is unable to cope.

“As thousands of families struggle to make ends meet, it is unacceptable that students are having their grants delayed because of flaws in a new system that was supposed to improve the processing of Third Level applications. Many students are massively reliant on the grants to get them through college and long delays like this will force even more students to drop out of college and into future emigration”