Department may favour student grant system that reduces red tape

The Department of Education has said is open to a student grant system where applicants might not have to submit a raft of documents in order to make it more efficient.

Although the department says that protecting the €380m of public funding set aside for the grants scheme would be a priority, it is willing to consider the idea put forward in a review of the difficulties during the first year of the new centralised operation of the grants.

The report by independent consultants Accenture identified the time spent by City of Dublin Vocational Education Committee trying to deal with delays in getting enough staff to run Student Universal Support Ireland (Susi) last year as a key factor.