The student grant awarding body, SUSI (Student Universal Support Ireland), has so far paid grants to 39,000 students for this academic year 2013/2014.
The move has been welcomed by Donegal Labour Senator Jimmy Harte who said the system is now working well.
Of these, 20,000 are first time applicants and 19,000 are students who have renewed their grants with SUSI.
Because of improvements to its system, SUSI has been running more efficiently and on schedule.
43,000 students – 23,000 first-time applicants and 20,000 renewal students – have already been notified that they have been awarded grants, compared to just 6,000 this time last year. The 4,000 students who have already been awarded grants and are still to be paid will receive their grants as soon as their colleges confirm that they are registered and attending and when students provide their bank details.
All eligible students who met SUSI’s priority processing deadlines and have submitted all the documents required to support their applications have now been awarded, in line with SUSI’s three-month timeline which began on 5th August.
Those applicants that supplied documents within deadline and have been asked subsequently for additional information are expected to receive notification of their grant status within four weeks of providing the information.
Processing continues
SUSI expects to award a total of 60,000 grants for this academic year – 40,000 of them to new applicants – and processing continues on those applications which came in after SUSI’s priority processing deadlines. Students can follow the progress of late applications on the online tracker system on https://www.grantsonline.ie/eseries/
Payments
Additional payment dates have been put in place to ensure that students get paid as early as possible.
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