"Yes we got it wrong" - the admission this afternoon from the Education Minister on the establishment of a centralised system for the payment of 3rd-level grants last year.
SUSI - Or Student Universal Support Ireland - was marred by months of delays in issuing grants.
The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) hit out at some universities in February for hiring debt collectors to find students who have not yet paid their fees.
This followed a breakdown in the SUSI system designed to allocate the grant money.
It all prompted Fianna Fail to brand the performance of the Education Minister in dealing with the controversy as 'abysmal' last November.
At the same time it was revealed that just over 3,000 new 3rd-level students have been paid their college grants for that term, and that it had only processed 20,000 of the 66,000 first-time applications it received.
Minister Ruairi Quinn said today there was a lack of understanding of the task involved when City of Dublin VEC got the contract.
new jPlayerPlaylist({ jPlayer: '#0', cssSelectorAncestor: '#jp_container_0' }, [ { title:'Ruairi Quinn', mp3:'http://www.radiocms.net/content/hose/media/000293/330303_1433840.mp3'
} ], { swfPath: '/assets/includes/js/jPlayer', supplied: 'mp3', wmode: 'window', solution: 'flash, html' });
