First the good news . . .

The Students' Unions at UCD and UCC will hold referendums this month on whether they will reaffiliate to the Union of Students in Ireland (USI). Students in Cork will go to the polls on January 21st; Belfield votes a week later.

However, eight other colleges have said they are "considering their position with USI" after a national council meeting last month in Castlebar, Co Mayo, which USI President Dermot Lohan admits ended in "farcical and comical" circumstances.

Student union officers from six colleges in the Republic - NUI Galway, DIT, Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, St Patrick's in Drumcondra, the National College of Ireland and Tallaght IT - put their names to a statement saying they are considering disaffiliating from the union. Two Northern colleges also signed the statement - Queen's University Belfast and the University of Ulster. The national council meeting which inspired the threatened disaffiliations ended with a walkout after a strange exchange. When challenged about his version of a conversation with a USI officer, a local students' union president told the council meeting that he had recorded the conversation. When a council member suggested from the floor that this would be illegal, USI president Dermot Lohan asked the local union president to "tell them you're bluffing". A number of student officers then walked out of the council meeting, rendering it inquorate. The local student union president admitted he had not recorded the conversation.

Lohan says his comment was intended as a joke at a meeting which was so divided it had become "totally farcical and pure comical.

"For me it was a joke. It was perfectly obvious that he hadn't bugged the phone and I wouldn't believe for a moment that he did."

Meanwhile, Lohan has rejected claims by the University of Ulster Students' Union (UUSU) that he would like to see USI become "a 26-county organisation".

Northern colleges are members of USI under a bilateral agreement with the British National Union of Students, which UUSU describe as "a successful model of a North/South body". However, a dispute has broken out this year between the Northern colleges and USI headquarters over voting rights. Lohan says Northern colleges should not expect to have the same voting entitlements as their counterparts in the Republic because they do not pay affiliation fees directly to USI's national headquarters in Dublin. Changing their voting entitlements without paying fees to national headquarters would require a constitutional amendment, he argues.

Lohan says that if every region of USI spent all of their affiliation fees within their region, there would be no money to pay for national officers or campaigns. He says there is "a very clear split" between colleges North and South over the issue of whether the Northern colleges should be entitled to greater representation; some of the Republic's colleges feel Northern representatives are "hijacking the union" with their campaign, he claims.

Lohan insists he has no desire to lose any student union, North or South, from USI. He has proposed a compromise system of weighted voting which he believes "could lead to a fair agreement on the issue".

The Overall President of UUSU, Shane Whelahan, says legal advice received by his union suggests a constitutional amendment or an extra financial contribution is not required. Northern colleges could be awarded extra voting rights by a directive from USI's national council to the union's elections committee, he argues.