The Government is allocating more money to the institutes of technology than to the university sector, new figures reveal.
According to Department of Education figures, the institutes of technology sector received €455 million from the capital investment programme between 1997 and 2001. This compares to €246 million received by the universities in the Republic over the same period.
Provisional figures for this year show a continuation of this trend, with the institutes of technology receiving €126 million, compared to €58 million for the universities.
The figures underline the heavy reliance of all seven universities on private donors.
Recently it was revealed that Atlantic Philanthropies, a foundation controlled by Irish-American billionaire Mr Chuck Feeney, contributed over €500 million to Irish universities in the past decade.
This is over twice the figure received from the State in the past five years.
The universities also receive funding through their various foundations but the names of donors - and the amounts given - are often clouded in secrecy.
Irish entrepreneurs like Dr Michael Smurfit, Sir Anthony O'Reilly and Mr Lochlainn Quinn have also been generous supporters of the Irish university sector in recent years.
The competition between the universities and the 17 colleges designated as institutes of technology for both capital investment and research capital expenditure is now intense.
Last week, the institutes, in an unusually candid statement, accused a "handful of university departments, mainly in the Dublin region" of absorbing two- thirds of all third-level research and development funding in the State.
This, it said, was "inhibiting regional development and clashing with the aims of the National Development Plan".
"The inevitable consequence will be the continued growth and expansion of industry and population in the Dublin area, choking development in the rest of the country", the statement from the institutes stated.