The Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) has made a fresh application for university status.
Last night, the Department of Education confirmed it was considering the application. The Minister for Education Mary Hanafin must now decide whether to establish a review group to examine the bid.
The DIT move comes almost 10 years after its long-running campaign for university status was rejected by an international review group.
The fresh bid for university status comes as DIT - now scattered across 39 locations around the city - prepares to move to a new €1 billion purpose-built facility at Grangegorman, north of the city centre.
By 2012, it is estimated that DIT will be the largest third-level institution in the State, with more than 23,000 full-time and part-time students.
Last night, the DIT president Dr Brian Norton said university status would provide new opportunities and help clear up some confusion about its remit.
"It's a matter of getting the proper designation for DIT, rather than becoming something else. Ambiguity about our current role is holding us back," he said.
Dr Norton said the college had made dramatic progress in the past decade. "We award our own degrees up to PhD level [ a status normally reserved for a university] and provide the full range of disciplines. To anyone else internationally that looks like a university."
Dr Norton stressed that DIT does not want to change it current distinctive role or even its title, widely recognised in Ireland and abroad.
However, university status would, he said, provide a more level playing field for the college, particularly on an international level, where similar colleges invariably enjoy university status. "We want to be able to say we are a university," he said.
DIT is the second institute to seek university status. An application from Waterford IT (WIT) is still being considered by an international expert appointed by Ms Hanafin.
Last night, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education confirmed DIT's application under Section 9 of the Universities Act, and said "supporting information requested by the department . . . is currently being considered."
The statement continued: "Earlier this year Dr Jim Port was asked to provide preliminary advice on the merits of the submission by WIT having regard to: (i) the national strategy for the development of Irish higher education, (ii) implications for regional development in the southeast in the context of the National Spatial Strategy, and (iii) any likely implications for the overall structure of higher education in Ireland. This report is currently under consideration. The DIT application raises many of the same issues as the application received from WIT and will be examined in that context also."
DIT's application is certain to generate much controversy within the third-level sector. The landmark OECD report on the sector four years ago recommended that no new Irish universities should be established.
However, any review group may find it difficult to reject DIT's contention that it is a de facto university.
A review group 10 years ago concluded DIT was on a "trajectory" to university status within five years.
