Student grant clinics have been set up in colleges as thousands still await their grants to be paid or appeals to be finalised.

A review of the failings of the Student Universal Support Ireland (Susi) grant system will focus on problems around documentation, processing and payments, with around 7,000 eligible students still waiting for their fees and grants to be paid.

Almost one third of first-year college students seeking grants have still not had their application decided.

Stringent efforts must be made to ensure the problems with Susi this year are not repeated, writes Niall Murray

Just 13,500 of the 35,000 first-year students due a college grant will have been paid by Christmas, despite government promises of a faster, more efficient system.

The private company, the systems of which are being partly blamed for student grant delays, is taking on a further 50 temporary staff to help try and meet a target to have 33,000 applications decided by Christmas.

The chaotic state of the college grant system was revealed yesterday amid warnings that students could be forced to drop out unless the backlog is cleared.

A better service for students was pledged but the new grants system is worse than the one it replaced, says education correspondent Niall Murray

Additional staff have had to be brought in as fewer than 700 students have been paid their grants so far by the new agency which Education Minster Ruairi Quinn had said would speed up the application process.

Minister for Education and Skills Ruairi Quinn today announced that a single student grant awarding authority is to replace the existing 66 bodies.

THE teaching union representing 70 part-time teachers who face being made to pay back thousands of euro which was wrongly paid to them has demanded an independent body examine exactly how much money is owed.