Jacinta Stewart told the Oireachtas Committee on Education that 20,350 applications are complete and at the "award" stage, with 25,310 currently being processed.
She said that 56,935 grant applications were received by the closing date of the scheme on 31 August.
Ms Stewart said over 9,000 applications have been received since the closing date, which is "currently...at the rate of about 200 a week".
"We had been assessing packs at the rate of 800 per day. It moved from there to 1,300 per day and by the end of next week, we will be at a rate of 1,900 per day".
The Committee was told that the SUSI grants system expects to have 30,000 grants awarded by the end of December.
It heard that ten additional staff have been recruited and will begin work on Monday, bringing to 106 the number of people working on the applications.
Earlier, the Union of Students in Ireland said that some students are in danger of dropping out of college because of the delay in processing their third-level grant applications.
Cat O'Driscoll, Vice-President of Academic Affairs in USI, said the fact that only 18,000 of the 66,000 who had applied for grants to the new centralised applications agency had heard back from it was causing a lot of problems for students.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, she said that some students are unable to meet their rent payments.
Others, she said, are unable to access the colleges' own emergency funds, as they were not fully registered because their grants had not come through.
"Many students are telling us that they are looking at dropping out in the next week or two," Ms O'Driscoll said.
"We need to get the bulk of these students to know whether they're going to be approved or not, so they can look to other sources of finance if they are not."
Ms O'Driscoll criticised the Student Universal Support Ireland (SUSI) agency which is administering the grant application system. She said it was under-staffed and "unfit for purpose".
The USI representative disagreed with the observation of Chairperson of the Oireachtas Committee on Education Joanna Tuffy that part of the explanation for the backlog may be the result of ineligible students applying for maintenance grants.
SUSI is processing grants for first time applicants.
According to Ms Tuffy, around 80,000 students were in first year. Only around half of those were eligible for maintenance grants, and yet there had been 66,000 applications to SUSI, she said.
However, Ms O'Driscoll added that not all first-time applicants are first year students.
Ms O'Driscoll said students adding an extra year on to their studies, mature students and post-graduate students may also be first-time applicants.
Meanwhile, Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn said the delays in processing student grants are not satisfactory.
Speaking as he arrived at Government Buildings, Mr Quinn said it is clear there are problems with the new system.
A Fianna Fáil Private Members' Motion on third-level grants is due to be debated in the Dáil tonight and tomorrow night.
The party's education spokesperson Charlie McConalogue said SUSI had not been equipped or resourced properly. He accused the minister of taking a hands-off approach after launching it in blaze of glory.
Mr McConalogue said the delay in grant payments was now a crisis for some students, which could threaten their future in college.
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