The Department of Education has reiterated its opposition to paying fees for nurses taking the University of Galway's new full-time degree course in nursing studies.

UG students' union has instructed its legal advisers to start High Court proceedings against the Department on behalf of the 50 nurses involved. Despite the legal action, a Department spokesman told E&L that its position had not changed and that efforts were ongoing to force UG to redesignate the course as part-time, which would put the course outside the scope of the "free fees" initiative.

The dispute arose when UG announced a one-year full-time degree course for nursing students, to bring the profession up to the same formal educational standard as other healthcare professionals. The move was in line with the interim report of the Nursing Commission and a general move in the profession towards continuing education, as well as the degree-based educational concept which was agreed by the various bodies involved in nursing education in 1994.

The Department of Education has refused to consider the course as eligible for "free fees" on the grounds that the Department of Health is responsible for paying for nursing education. The Department of Health, meanwhile, argues that the course is optional and nursing students should therefore take it at their own expense.

Officials from the Department of Education met with representatives of the Higher Education Authority last week, as part of an effort to make UG redesignate the course as self-financing part-time rather than full-time. The Department argues that such courses are eligible for tax relief on fees and that nurses can also apply for assistance to local health boards.

The course officially started, on a full-time basis, earlier this month, with 51 of 55 students who graduated from the diploma programme taking the course at their own expense. UG has set the fee at the lowest possible level, £1,965, the standard fee for an arts course.

Last year, the HEA recommended to UG that the degree course should be offered on a part-time basis only, but the university has consistently refused to yield to pressure.

A spokesman for the university says that it is "not prepared to depart" from its educational model for nursing education. He says that the nursing school plans to introduce a part-time degree programme from next year but that the full-time option would remain in place. "You can hardly have a part-time degree year if you don't have a full-time degree on which to base it," he observes.

In addition, the nursing school is offering a programme to enable nurses who graduated before 1992 to catch up on changes in the curriculum in the areas of the social and biological sciences, and a qualifying exam for nurses who qualified in 1992 and 1993 to enable them to enter the degree year.

So UG makes advances in nursing training in line with the needs of the profession, and nursing students commit their own funds to improving their own educational standards. However, the continuing efforts of the departments of Education and Health to avoid obligations in the sector could prove damaging, in the long term, to the profession of nursing.