EVERY academic year, Grantwatch has to reacquaint itself with the dates by which some grant awarding bodies made their final payments in the previous year. This is a depressing business and is done less out of desire than out of a need to remind your correspondent of just how lousy some local authorities are (and I emphasise some, for many do the best they can with limited resources and, sometimes, less co operation from the Department of Education) at making grant payments on time.

Last year, some students were still waiting for their second grant payment in April, which must have meant a very miserable post Christmas period for them indeed.

In the end, the only solution to late grant payments by individual local authorities is probably the formation of a central body, similar perhaps to the CAO in Galway, which could process all grant payments and ensure that cash strapped students are not kept waiting for any longer than is necessary.

UCD students' union last week reiterated its call for such a structure. "Students have already returned to college and not one local authority has paid grants yet," says the union's education officer, Cormac Moore.

"This is causing a nightmare for many students, who must already find the finances to pay for accommodation, deposits and starting up costs, and are often forced to take out loans."

Even elements within the Department of Education believe this is a reasonable solution, but the funds to establish it and the willingness to proceed appear to be absent. Therefore, it seems likely that grant recipients are in for another year of waiting, hoping, despairing and borrowing before grant payments are eventually made.

Grantwatch has learned of a number of students caught in a bind in relation to the £150 service charge levied by colleges.

Under the current arrangements, a student in receipt old a grant does not have to pay the service charge since the grant awarding body covers it, but the student does need proof that he or she has been approved for a grant.

One student who applied to an RTC, and whose parents were on social welfare, had not received a letter from his local VEC indicating his grant had been approved and the day of registration at the college was imminent.

The VEC refused to hunt up his application and send out a letter, arguing that it would take too much time. The RTC, meanwhile, insisted on a letter from the authority or £150.

The result: a Catch 22 situation for the student, and another casualty of an over worked system.

It is early days yet in the grants process but, briefly, Cork Corporation had 400 new applicants this year, slightly down on last year, but it expects to make first payments by the end of October. Cork County Council was awaiting registrations but estimated mid October for first payments.

Cork VEC, meanwhile, was sending some cheques out to colleges last week. The recipients will be those whose forms were all in on time and properly filled out: it's worth remembering that students too can be at fault for delays in the grants process.