THE Minister for Education has moved to defuse a potentially damaging election row in Waterford over her decision to upgrade all regional technical colleges to institute of technology status.
The governing body of the recently redesignated Waterford Institute of Technology yesterday rejected the recommendation of a ministerial advisory committee that all the State's RTCs should be renamed and put under a qualification awarding Irish National Institute of Technology. The INIT would replace the National Council for Educational Awards as the awarding body in the technological sector. Ms Breathnach accepted this recommendation on Tuesday.
The WIT's governing body said the recommendation would "neutralise" the Minister's original intention to upgrade and rename Waterford RTC as the Waterford Institute of Technology.
It demanded that "the Minister confirm her intention to underpin the new status of Waterford Institute of Technology with its own independent legislation, the same as that for the Dublin Institute of Technology".
Sources close to Ms Breathnach emphasised yesterday that the proposed INIT would have the power to delegate authority to individual colleges to award certificates, diplomas and degrees.
They pointed to her statement on Tuesday which promised that an interim review group, to be chaired by Prof Dervilla Donnelly, would be responsible for immediately processing" applications from colleges looking for these powers. They indicated that Waterford would be the first to be considered and the first to get such powers.
They said the second successful applicant could be Cork RTC, the students and start of which were outraged at the Minister's decision in January to upgrade Waterford unilaterally.
However, this did not placate the Cork RTC students' union president, Mr Matty O'Callaghan. He is standing as an independent candidate in Cork against Labour's Mr Toddy O'Sullivan to protest at the Government's failure to upgrade the college.
He said Ms Breathnach and Mr O'Sullivan were trying "to pull the wool" over local voters' eyes by making them think that Cork RTC would be properly upgraded, rather than merely given a change of name. "This will only confuse both students and employers, who will not know which colleges have good quality academic standards and student services and which don't," he said.
In its statement, the Waterford Institute of Technology governing body pointed out that the original decision to upgrade Waterford was based on a key conclusion of the report of the Steering Committee on the Future Development of Higher Education. This was "that the southeast region was disadvantaged due to a significant shortage of degree provision in comparison with other regions".
"The Minister's decision was, therefore, based on the establishment of a new remit for this college to enable it to increase its level of provision to over 6.000 full time students, of which 50 per cent would be studying on degree courses.
The WIT statement said that in the light of this need to bridge the divide between the universities and the RTCs, Ms Breathnach had decided to give it "the same powers and status as the Dublin Institute of Technology".
The secretary of the Waterford University Action Group, Mr Oliver Clery, said the effect of the Minister's decision would be to keep Waterford within the RTC sector and make the recent upgrading of the college "a name change and nothing else".
His group was now calling on Waterford politicians, Labour's Mr Brian O'Shea, the Minister of State for Health, and Mr Austin Deasy of Fine Gael, to resign as members of Government parties which had yet again failed to live up to their promises.