Cork has biggest backlog of grant applications in country
In Cork county alone, a quarter of third-level grant applications have yet to receive a decision from the county council because of outstanding documentation.
Figures from the local authority show that, with the end of the college year just weeks away, 354 grant applications have not yet been finalised. The backlog is understood to be the largest of any local authority in the country, although a council spokesman stressed he delay in making a decision on the outstanding applications was because they were incomplete and had to be referred back to applicants seeking additional documentation.
The Higher Education Authority (HEA) chief executive Tom Boland yesterday called for the centralisation of all grant payments to one body instead of more than 60 councils and Vocational Education Committees (VECs). At a conference on transforming public services at Croke Park, he expressed dismay at the inability of a significant number of these bodies to make grant decisions and awards in a timely manner in the past year, which, he said, has led to stress for students and costs for higher education institutions.
Cork County Council, meanwhile, received 1,475 third-level grant applications for the ’09/’10 year, including 202 applications lodged after the closing date.
That equates to a 32% increase in applications compared with the number for 2008, when 1,119 applications were received.
Figures for March of this year showed that the local authority had 560 applications awaiting a decision, by far the highest number of any city or county council around the country.
At that stage, 555 had documentation outstanding while in another five cases processing had not yet started.
In March there were 1,879 applications around the country that had yet to receive a decisions, with more than 90% delayed due to a lack of documentation.
A spokesman for Cork County Council said the local authority had been dealing with an increase in the number of applications despite having been allocated no additional staff.
The spokesman said that more applications had been processed already this year than in the whole of 2008, even though some applications were still outstanding.
“We can only deal with those applications as they come in,” he said.
“All of those [applications] have been opened and dealt with, but 24% referred back to the applicant as they were incomplete.”
He added that priority had to be given to those who had applied before the closing date and that any grant fees could be paid retrospectively, even though the academic year is almost at an end.
The March figures showed the Cork County Council backlog to be larger than all local authorities in Dublin combined.
The figure for outstanding applications in Cork city was just three in March, with 97 between the two Tipperary local authorities, 37 applications split between Limerick City and County Councils, and 21 between the two local authorities in Waterford. There were 128 grant decisions awaited in Co Clare.
