The Higher Education Authority has said it will "look sympathetically" on funding college places for asylum seekers this year.
However, it will “need clarity” from the Minister for Education on plans to allow them access third-level in the same way as European Union nationals.
With second round CAO offers due this week, a spokesman said the HEA had not yet received details from the Department of Education of the reforms.
Minister for Education Jan O’Sullivan said in April she planned to abolish overseas fees for asylum seekers who had been in the Irish education system for over five years.
This was also one of the key reforms recommended in a report from a working group on improvements to the asylum process which was published by the Department of Justice in June.
Finalised
However, when asked whether details of the reforms would be published before the final CAO offers were made, a department spokeswoman said: “The details of the scheme are being finalised at present, and the scheme will be published in the near future.”
The HEA, in its funding regulatory role, distributes the statutory funding per EU student to third-level institutions.
Non-EU students must pay the full cost of their college education from their own resources.
The HEA spokesman said it was up to individual third-level institutions as to which candidates they admitted to courses and none had yet signalled to the authority that it was offering places to students in the asylum process.
He said the colleges themselves may not yet know whether they were offering places to asylum seekers as this was not a factor in the application process.
“We are probably talking about small enough numbers, possibly fewer than 20 this year,” he said.
“The Minister has signalled these changes, and we will look sympathetically on any asylum seeker college applicant this year. But it is going to be a bigger issue in coming years, so we will need clarity on a number of issues.”
Of particular concern is how course work placements would work given that asylum seekers cannot take up employment.
It is estimated that 60 second-level students who are in the asylum system will sit the Leaving Cert over the next three to four years.
Some 22 were scheduled to sit it last June.
However, with the number of asylum seekers anticipated to increase considerably in coming years, so too will the number sitting State examinations.
575 points
Earlier this month the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin announced it would fully fund the education of Ukrainian student
Anna Kern
, who had achieved 575 points in her Leaving Cert and wanted to study physiotherapy.
A graduate of Coláiste Nano Nagle in Limerick city, she would not have qualified for the reformed scheme as she has only been in the asylum process since 2013.
