IT Services acknowledged that direct logins are an important tool for students and that there is a need for them to be publicised among the student body, stating that that they are “currently reviewing the outage and intend to make direct logins to these services permanently available, the details of which will be posted on our website”. The University Observer spoke to a number of students affected by the outage.Ann O’Doherty, a third-year Veterinary student, told The University Observer: “I feel really annoyed at IT Services about the outage. No email of apology was sent out after the site went live again and I really think they owe it to us.”Another student, Thomas O’Connell, a final-year Arts student said: “I was unable to get on to Blackboard at all over the weekend, I had counted on the long weekend to get on top of things, now I’m more behind than before, it’s such a nightmare.”James McKenna of second-year Social Science expressed his concern to The University Observer: “It’s a real worry, I own a Mac so I can’t download Backpack so am dependent on Blackboard to function. I’ve heard of this happening a good few times before and can only imagine the stress if it happened during exams.” UCD students can access information regarding scheduled and unscheduled outages from the service announcements available from the IT Services website.IT Services also said in their statement that they “do not anticipate any further problems at this time”.