CORK RTC students and staff will run a candidate against Labour Minister of State, Mr Toddy O'Sullivan, in the forthcoming general election to protest at the Government's failure to upgrade the college to an institute of technology.
Students union president, Mr Matty O'Callaghan, said yesterday they would hold a selection convention tomorrow morning. Mr O'Callaghan (21), a business studies student from Ovens, Co Cork, is a possible candidate.
On Saturday morning, a delegation from the college's governing body had talks in Cork with, the Tanaiste, Mr Spring, the Minister for Education, Ms Breathnach, Labour's national organiser, Mr Fergus Finlay, and Mr O'Sullivan. The delegation was in the city for a preparatory regional meeting for the biennial party conference in Limerick in April. Several hundred RTC students picketed the meeting.
Mr O'Callaghan said the RTC was not satisfied with the time scale and procedures of the expert group recently established by Ms Breathnach which will examine the Cork college's case for institute of technology status as part of an overall examination of the third level technological sector.
He said around 2,000 Cork RTC students had registered in Mr O'Sullivan's Cork South Central constituency since the autumn as part of the Union of Students in Ireland's national campaign to register students' votes in the constituencies where they study.
Mr O'Callaghan said the students would be targeting Mr O'Sullivan both because a Labour education minister had ignored Cork RTC's case for upgrading and because Mr O'Sullivan should have known about the widespread local support for the upgrading and should have made representations on the RTC's behalf.
They would be putting up a candidate in Cork South Central rather than Cork North Central, where the college is situated. This was because of Mr O'Sullivan's presence there a higher percentage of the RTC's students were from the southern constituency 30 per cent of the voters there were under 25, and the wide range of social problems in the northern constituency might marginalise the college upgrading issue.
In the 1992 election, with the Labour vote reaching record levels, nationwide, Mr O'Sullivan topped the poll in Cork South Central with a strong personal vote of 9,662 first preferences.
Meanwhile, student union representatives from 10 out of the 12 RTCs and institutes of technology met to discuss the upgrading controversy in Galway on Saturday. They expressed concern about the expert group's timescale and criteria and evaluation process for upgrading RTCs.