THE IRISH TIMES third level debating competition enters the semi final stage next week. The 117 teams from colleges around the country who participated in the first round have been whittled down to 16 teams and 14 individuals.

UCD continue to dominate, with six teams and two individuals through. TCD's Hist have also done well so far, with three teams and two individuals through. Their old rivals the Phil, meanwhile, have managed to send only two individuals through to this stage of the competition, while King's Inns have sent through three teams.

UL's Debating Union continues, to go from strength to strength, with two teams and two individuals competing in the semis. UCG have a similar number through, while UCC, last year's winners of the team and individual competitions, are represented only by three individual speakers. Finally, Maynooth, the DIT and the NCIR all have one speaker each participating in the semi finals.

"It is getting increasingly difficult to get past the first round," says Kerida Naidoo, the convener of this year's competition. "It is now the case that lots of really good speakers do not make it through the first round." He also notes the exceptional quality of female speakers in what was often regarded as a male dominated pursuit. This year 21 women are through to the semifinals.

The first semi final takes place on Monday, January 22nd, in TCD's Graduate Memorial Building, where competitors will debate the Paisley unfriendly motion that Home Rule is no longer Rome Rule. Waterford RTC is the venue on Tuesday 23rd where debaters will Welcome the return of Communism, or not, as the case may be.

With a nice touch of irony, given the current debate in that college on the wisdom of inviting British royalty to tread on Galway soil, UCG will host the third semi final on Friday 26th for which the motion is that Ireland should back Britain on Europe.

Finally, the letters page of UCC students' union's weekly magazine, and the suitably acerbic comments of its editor, might give the casual reader good reason to suppose that here at least radical feminism has, yet to make significant in roads. Therefore it is apt that the last semifinal, at which the motion to be debated is that Women should be paid for work in the Home, should take place in UCC on Saturday 27th.

UCC may have swept the boards at the final of the competition last year on their home ground but there will be no home advantage this year The final of the 1996 competition will be held in the potentially hostile environs of UCD on February 16th.