Officials sorry for Susi grant ‘chaos’

The student grants system that caused “chaos” when set up four years ago has lost so much money it would risk being closed down if it was a private company, the chair of a Dáil group has claimed.

The suggestion was made at the Public Accounts Committee during a detailed discussion on the recent crisis surrounding the Student Universal Support Ireland (Susi) grant system.

Department of Education and City of Dublin Education and Training Board officials offered “sincere apologies” for the scandal affecting vulnerable students and their families. They insist it has been fixed.

However, despite highlighting a number of improvements since the system failed hundreds of students in need of financial support, they continued to face criticism about the problems.

The meeting took place due to a recent Comptroller & Auditor General report which warned that bad planning, outsourcing core services without any contracts, and inadequate staffing caused the SUSI system to lose €5.9m — three times its budget — and cause chaos for students in 2012-2013, its first year in operation.

The system was put in place to speed up the provision of grants to students, but instead resulted in major delays which saw some students not receiving vital funds for a year.

At the height of the scandal, the service had 60 workers fewer than needed with the issue unresolved for 17 months, while millions of euro in grants were also incorrectly given to some students who did not need them.

PAC chair and Fianna Fáil TD John McGuinness said the system suffered a €4.1m loss in its first three years.

Criticising what he said was slow progress in addressing the financial losses, he said “if that [SUSI] was a private business and allowed that to happen I’d say you wouldn’t be in business”.

Responding to questions from Labour TD Robert Dowds, City of Dublin Education Training Board chief executive Jacinta Stewart said the number of appeals and successful appeals has fallen from 12% and 74% in 2012-2013 to 5% and 15% this year — highlighting how improvements are taking place.

However, she faced further criticism as the outsourced helpline which was unable to meet demand went to Abtran — a company Mr Dowds noted has also received contracts from Irish Water, E-Flow, Revenue, and others despite being owned by a parent company “in the Virgin Islands”, and which was the most expensive of the bidders.

After further questioning from Fine Gael TD Aine Collins about grant overpayments, Ms Stewart said just “10%-14%” of these recipients gave it back, a figure she admitted is “not huge”.

Department of Education secretary general Seán Ó Foghlú said a departmental plan to examine how the lost grants money could be recouped has been discussed since late last year.