THE programme to provide an extra 1,000 computer software graduates a year to cope with skills shortages in industry will have to be postponed, unless the Government soon comes up with the required investment, the university presidents have said.

Speaking on their behalf after a meeting in Dublin with IBEC yesterday, Dr Seamus Smyth, the president of St Patrick's College, Maynooth, said the Government "has not yet put solid figures down for the programme's recurrent and capital provisions".

He said that unless those figures were forthcoming by early next month, the programme - which is due to start next October - would have to be postponed until October 1998. This would mean its first batch of software graduates would not come on the market until 2002.

"It's a fundamental problem. Industry has short term needs but the universities can only deliver on a medium term basis. A four year degree takes four years," said Dr Smyth.

Universities would have to make decisions in early July about hiring teachers on contract and buying equipment to be in place by September.

He was speaking after the launching of a new joint forum between IBEC and the Committee of the Heads of Irish Universities which aims to match the needs of the fast growing electronics and information technology industries with the courses provided by third level institutions Dr Smyth said the universities ability to respond to industry needs was being constrained by the extremely low levels of government investment in equipment.

The total capital equipment allowance for the whole university sector was a "derisory" £2 million per year, and with such a sum "we are incapable of addressing anything".

An extra 1,000 graduates per year would mean an extra 4,000 students over the life of a four year course and such numbers also required new investment in buildings and infrastructure, he said.

In March the Department of Enterprise and Employment and the Department of Education announced that they would be asking third level institutions to bid for contracts to train 1,000 extra software graduates and 750 computer technicians a year.