Earlier this year Education Minister Ruairi Quinn decided to move responsibility for the payment of Third Level grants from the country's 66 local authorities to a newly created body known as the Student Universal Support Ireland (SUSI).
However with a staff of just 65 and with 70,000 grant applicants SUSI has struggled to cope with the workload meaning that just 10 per cent of grants have been paid out. With most third level institutions making some provision for the late payment of course fees it is the delay in the payment of the maintenance grant that is causing real hardship.
Now however it has emerged that students are turning up at SVP offices looking for food parcels.
Speaking this week to the Irish Examiner the vice President of the Cork Branch of SVP Brendan Dempsey said ''we know of students who are going what they describe as couch-surfing. They stay on somebody else's sofa for the night or a chair or the floor and they have no food. It's a brand new experience for them, that all of a sudden they have nothing and their mam and dad cannot come to their rescue because things are very bad at home too''.
Indeed things are so bad ''they don't even have the bus fare to go home. They're only teenagers, a lot of them, and they are absolutely bewildered''.
Mr Dempsey pointed out that in Cork City alone the SVP has 120 communities and that ''most of them would have met students in this position''.
However he pointed out that this was not just the position in Cork but is replicated around the country.
He added ''We are getting requests around a number of regions and each request is being looked at on a case by case basis. The society is very concerned and finds it completely unacceptable , what's happening with the administration of the grants scheme''.
Earlier this week Minister Quinn apologised to Students and their families for the distress that the delays are causing and moved to assure parents and students that the bulk of the backlog would be dealt with before Christmas.