A facilitator is to be sent to the Limerick Institute of Technology by the Minister for Education, Dr Woods, to try to resolve a dispute between 23 architectural technology students and the college management over the withdrawal of recognition of the course by the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI).
Dr Woods told Mr Michael Noonan TD that a facilitator would interview "the relevant interests with a view to arriving at a resolution of the problem".
The second-year students protested at proposals which would have them on work experience next year and back on campus for in-studio practice in their final year.
The syllabus change led the RIAI to point out that over 95 per cent of its member-practices would not be interested in employing graduates of the new course.
This week the head of the School of the Built Environment, Mr Gerry O'Loughlin, wrote to the students' parents saying that the "simple facts" were that if the students wanted a degree from the awarding body, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, they would have to complete the approved course. This would make them "more highly skilled and better able to meet the changing needs of a career as an architectural technologist".
He continued: "You will agree that students should not let those who have nothing to lose mislead them or discourage them from completing their course of study."
The class representative, Mr Alan Ryan, pointed out that he was aged 25 and was annoyed that the college was writing to his parents. "There is nobody misleading anybody in this class. We know what we are supposed to be achieving and we are not achieving that," he said.
Due to space considerations, a paragraph was removed from the end of a report headed "Academic has joined protest over college's standards" in last Saturday's editions. The paragraph included a statement from Mr Michael O'Connell, secretary/ financial controller of Limerick Institute of Technology, which said that in June 1998 the college was in the process of electing an academic council.
Mr O'Connell said it was untrue that changes (to the architectural technology course) were introduced without the governing body's knowledge.