Micheal Martin, Minister for Education, may be man of the month in Galway after his announcement in support of the multi-denominational primary school project there. However, student nurses at the university are not too enamoured.
The students, whose representatives met the Minister on his visit last week, have decided to proceed with their legal challenge over tuition fees.
"Pleadings are still being drafted, but they will be served in a few days," Mr Darren McCallig, president of University of Galway Students' Union, told The Irish Times.
The dispute is over fourth-year tuition fees of £1,965 a head. Traditionally, nursing education was funded by the Department of Health. The union maintains that the Government's refusal to extend the free fees scheme to cover student nurses in their fourth and final year is discriminatory.
The Minister would make no promises at his meeting last week, when he was on campus to open the multi-million pound students' centre, Aras na Macleinn. The matter was one principally for the Department of Health, he observed, but he was willing to hear the students' case.
