SENIOR officials in the Department of Education are determined that Ireland will not go down the British road, of every town with a higher education college demanding and getting its own university.
"If the big RTCs - Waterford, Cork and Galway - were allowed to go their own way, it would cause terrible damage to the system and to the standing of many RTC qualifications," an official said yesterday.
The National Council for Educational Awards has validated 124,000 qualifications, most from the RTCs, in the past 25 years. "These Irish qualifications are as good as any in the world, and we are determined that they should not be devalued in any way," said a source close to the NCEA.
If the arguments of such officials win out over pre election political pressures, Cork RTC is unlikely for the moment to get any upgrading to Waterford's Institute of Technology status.
"Everything that happens must be in the context of such upgrading being equally available to all the RTCs," an official said yesterday.
Waterford's upgrading arguments had a double advantage.
The report of the Higher Education Authority's steering committee on the future of higher education was firmly in favour of the upgrading of Waterford RTC as "the most appropriate response" to the needs of the southeast, where the number of students taking degrees is well below the national average.
At the same time, the decision to upgrade Waterford RTC spiked a well organised campaign for a university in the city, after the RTC's management had shrewdly persuaded the university campaigners that their best chance of success lay in falling in behind the RTC's demand for technological institute status.
Cork believed the HEA's steering committee was biased against the second city from the outset since its main rem it was to study higher education needs in four specific areas: the south east Dublin, Tipperary and Mayo.
Each region has since received something from its work. Dublin has the announcement of the new regional technical college in Blanchardstown; Tipperary the Rural Business Development Institute; and Castlebar an extension of Galway RTC.
The HEA's committee also recommended that all the RTCs should have their titles altered to Regional Institutes of Technology, which would have given their qualifications an important symbolic boost without significantly changing their formal status.
The Department and the RTC directors differ on why this did not happen. If it had, perhaps it would have helped to defuse the outrage felt by Cork RTC's supporters.
But it might not have stopped the bigger and more successful RTCs - Waterford, Cork, Galway and perhaps Athlone - from pushing for more far reaching changes, such as the eventual right to award their own degrees.
Athlone has now joined the queue of colleges publicly campaigning for upgrading. Its students are threatening to block roads in the town this morning, while its director, Dr David Fenton, has accused the Minister of downgrading Athlone by granting institute status to Waterford only and thus discouraging hi tech industry from locating in the midlands. Complaints are also being heard in Sligo and Dundalk.
Cork students demonstrating outside the Department yesterday chanted that they were Ms Breathnach's "worst nightmare". Not for the first time she may have misjudged an issue so that an objectively sound policy move may turn into an election year headache, as towns demanding upgraded colleges mobilise against Labour.
On the face of it, Cork RTC has an almost unanswerable case for parity with Waterford. It is the largest and most diverse of the RTCs.
It has three campuses - incorporating schools of music and of art and design - 14 degree courses, the highest points level for entry of any RTC, more applicants than any RTC outside Dublin, master's and doctorate programmes in science and engineering, and more R and D activity than any other college.
But the statement after six hours of talks between the Department and Cork RTC's management last Friday gave no great hope for rapid movement. The discussions were about "a process to facilitate the future status and development of the college, within a national framework for the technological sector".
National frameworks take time to evolve. Time passes, however, and the Government hopes the "political hiccup" of the Cork RTC row will be overtaken by events, and largely forgotten by the time an election comes round.