COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL
MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL
Monday, April 12, 2010
QUESTION NO.14
QUESTION: Councillor D. Looney
To ask the Manager to provide a full report, including relevant statistics, on delays in the payment of student maintenance grants in the 2009-2010 academic year, and on the planned changes to application and processing of grants for the 2010-2011 academic year?
REPLY:
South Dublin County Council received approximately 1500 applications for Higher Education Grants for the 2009/2010 academic year, of these 1200 were awarded a grant. The remainder consisted of ineligible applications, applications for and forwarded to other Local Authorities and incomplete applications. 42 files were closed off because no Further Information as requested have been received and 5 applications were late.
A pilot scheme to make payments to Students by way of Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT), involving the four Dublin Local Authorities, with the full backing of Colleges and Students Unions, was undertaken during this academic year. In advance of agreement being reached three specific issues were highlighted and negotiated : File Format for exchange of information between the Council and institutions, Timeframe for verification of attendance and schedule of payment dates and Impact for students of EFT payment proposals.
Payment of the first Maintenance is dependant on the Student returning the Confirmation of Registration Form duly stamped and signed by the College, and payments for second and third maintenance payments are dependent on the College verifying the Student's attendance for the specified period. Payments for the first two instalments were made to successful applicants roughly in line with timescales for previous years. All payments for Maintenance 1 (September to December 2009 ) and Maintenance 2 (Jan to March 2010 ) have been made to students, and payment of Maintenance 3 (Apr to May) is already being processed for some students where attendances have been confirmed by their College. All other students will be paid following verification from their Colleges upon their return from the Easter break.
The following is an outline of the schedule of payments made during this academic year in line with agreed schedules with Colleges:
1st Maintenance – Students whose applications were approved pending Confirmation of Registration were paid on 13th October 2009 when the registration forms were returned. Ist installment payments continued to be made upon receipt of Registration forms on a weekly basis thereafter.
2nd Maintenance – Students’ "verified attendance” files were received from Colleges on the 13th January and payments of the second installment were lodged to Students accounts on the 27th January 2010.
3rd Maintenance – The first of the Students’ “verified attendance” files were received on 25th March 2010 and payment for the current period are being processed, with lodgments to Students accounts from the 6th April onwards, depending on receipt of “verified attendance” files from Colleges.
To date a total of €3.9m has been paid in Grants for the curent academic year.
The Council did not encounter any undue delay in making payments to students during this academic year and as stated above payments made were broadly in line with timescales for previous years.
The Council is continually examining ways of improving its efficiencies and effectiveness by monitoring outcomes and results of its processes, and a review of the assessment process prior to the commencement of the 2010 / 2011 academic year has already commenced. Every effort is made to examine in detail the current process, “bottlenecks” which occur for various reasons, and how best to streamline assessments within current resources available.
The punctuality of the annual publication of the Scheme by the Department of Education cannot be underestimated. Efforts should be made at central level to expedite its publications as the absence of the income bands restricts preparatory work to the IT system supporting the HEG operations, as well as limiting preliminary means testing of applications received.