21,000 students yet to receive a decision on grants

More than half of the 41,000 students to submit all the necessary documents have not yet had a decision on their grant applications.

But Student Universal Support Ireland (Susi) said it expects to have decided all those applications in time for first payments at the end of next month.

After long delays last year, Susi had 59,000 first-time applications by the early-August deadline.

It said 41,000 of them have returned the documents requested in support of their applications and 10,000 of these have been awarded a grant. Another 5,000 have been awarded but must confirm their course acceptance before qualifying for payment. Some 2,000 have been asked for additional information and around 3,000 have been refused or their application has been cancelled.

“Susi will now move to finally process the remaining 21,000 applications received from students who have submitted the required supporting documents. This process is expected to be completed by the end of October,” it said.

Payments are due to be made from Oct 18 to students in third-level courses, with first payments for further education students to issue a week later.

Susi said it is more than two months ahead of last year. At this stage in 2012, no grant awards had been made and 43,000 students had still not returned forms.

The organisation urged students who have yet to submit documents needed to progress their applications to do so as soon as possible.

Susi said final decisions should be made within three to four weeks of getting all requested documents from an applicant. It could not say last night what the average time of this final assessment stage has been, adding that it depends on whether additional information is needed on foot of the documents supplied.