UCD has set November 20th as the date for a crucial referendum on disaffiliation from USI. Students will vote on a proposal that mandates UCD students' union to disaffiliate next July. The reason for the seven-month delay between voting and disaffiliation - should the vote go that way - is twofold: to cause the minimum of disruption during the academic year and to allow USI to consider sources of unhappiness raised by the disaffiliation campaign and the students' union.

The union has decided not to request a mandate on whether or not to support the motion, despite reports that it was formally supporting disaffiliation.

According to UCD students' union president Ian Walsh, the referendum springs from a number of issues. These include a belief that UCD students' union cannot justify USI affiliation fees of £40,000 for the service it receives from USI; that USI is neglecting its lobbying and research roles and that some element of regionalisation needs to be clawed back, since too much time and effort is being spent working at local level, while not addressing the needs of the larger students' unions. Walsh, in common with others in USI, suggests the union needs to seriously reconsider its role as a national representative body.

If USI changes in response to these concerns, he says, UCD could possibly hold a second referendum before the end of the academic year allowing the union to remain in USI. However, anti-disaffiliation campaigners believe it would be difficult to organise such a referendum in time.

USI president Colman Byrne admits that it is "a difficult referendum" but questioned some of the motivation behind it. He says he "agrees totally" with a number of the criticisms from UCD students' union and says that there are still faults within USI. But the basis of the argument, he says, is that it is better to improve USI from within instead of from outside. "We're very open to reform and we agree with some of the criticisms. But we can't deliver a lot of the reforms being called for without congress reversing policy. Some of these policies, like regionalisation, will not be reversed," he says. "The regional officers in Belfast, Cork and Galway are very important to us."

Disaffiliation would be a blow to USI, he says, but the union would survive. "It would affect us in a political sense. It would have an effect on our finances, though not a crippling effect," he says.

If UCD does disaffiliate, it will not only have an effect on USI's financial situation, but it will also seriously dent USI's claims to be the voice of students, given that most of the State's universities would then be outside the national union. It would leave the University of Galway and DCU, the other two universities currently in membership, more isolated in a national union dominated by technological colleges. Finally, disaffiliation by UCD would set back USI's hopes of encouraging non-affiliated universities to join.

While UCD prepares for its referendum, the students' unions in the non-affiliated universities - TCD, UL, UCC and Maynooth - are continuing to build the foundations for a possible representative body for their unions. According to Sheila Griffin, president of the students' union in UCC, approaches have already been made to those behind the "No" campaign in UCD.

"At the moment we are considering starting up an alternative union, the executive membership of which would be made up of the presidents of the non-affiliated unions," she says. "It's mainly in an effort to get recognition from the Department of Education, since we have no voice at present." Bobby O'Connor, president of the students' union in UL, points out that the non-affiliated colleges have been co-operating informally for some time and work together on issues of mutual concern. "Whether we put a name on it or not would be another day's work," he says.

Ian Walsh says he will "reserve judgement" on the issue of an alternative representative body. He believes USI can act as a representative of both technical colleges and universities. "I hope it wouldn't come to a situation where I would be advocating an alternative union," he says.

Previous efforts to establish such a body have been unsuccessful, but Griffin says a representative body consisting of UCC, TCD, UL, Maynooth and UCD could be a "viable alternative" to USI.

Such a body could present the Department of Education with a dilemma. The former Minister for Education, Niamh Bhreathnach, insisted she would negotiate only with USI and not with individual colleges, a position echoed by the current Minister, Micheal Martin.

But the current administration could find it harder to ignore five university unions representing almost 50,000 students - almost as many students as USI itself represents in the State - especially if those students have made a democratic decision to opt out of the national union.