The president of the National College of Ireland, whose proposal for a £31 million campus in Dublin's Docklands has run into resistance from the Department of Education, has appealed for talks to overcome misunderstandings about projected costings and student numbers.
It is understood that no final decision has been made by the Department about Government funding for the project.
Prof Joyce O'Connor said the NCI had sold its Ranelagh site for £12.6 million, which gave it more than £10 million, which was a "great start" to funding the proposed campus.
Since the revelation a week ago of internal Department of Education memos challenging virtually all the figures for the project - on student numbers, costings and viability of courses - she said it had received "tremendous support" from IBEC, ICTU and local community leaders.
The chief executive of the Dublin Docklands Development Authority, Mr Peter Coyne, said yesterday that despite the recent controversy, the DDDA continued to be "fully supportive of the proposal".
He said the NCI's Docklands campus was "of huge importance to the realisation of the vision of the DDDA, which is all about social inclusion and economic regeneration." Although its innovative combination of business and community education provision might be difficult for some people to understand, he believed it could be "an example of educational and regenerational initiative for other parts of the country".
The chairman of NCI's governing body, Dr Patrick Galvin, said the proposed campus was "unusual in terms of third-level institutions in that the NCI is bringing over 75 per cent - £24 million - to the project, and asking the Government to provide less than 25 per cent."
College sources said yesterday there were misunderstandings between the Department and the NCI in a number of areas. They said a £14 million cost estimate early last year had been "an indicative figure, not a costed projection".
Similarly, a £20 million "interim costing" last November had been done before a design team had been appointed and a feasibility study carried out. The sources said the Department had received a copy of that study last March, and it had included £11 million in extra costings necessitated by having to build the foundations deeper, a "contingency" provision in the event of unforeseen costs and fitting out costs.
The sources said there was "absolutely no question" that the Department of Education would have to pay off the project's bank borrowings, in the event of any funding shortfall, and the banks had been told this. The NCI - which had never received any capital funding from the Department - was looking for £7 million as a "once-off capital contribution".
Department officials have called the NCI's student number projections, particularly in the information technology area, "ambitious" and "superficial".
The NCI sources said yesterday that with 40 full-time computer students starting last year, another 120 this autumn, and a total of 386 in place in autumn 2001, when the college will move completely to the Docklands campus, it was "well on its way" to a projected total of 600 "full-time equivalent" computer students in place by the academic year 2002-2003.
The sources said much of the confusion over projected student numbers was caused by the fact that 80 per cent of students at NCI were part-timers, and thus difficult to compare with mainstream third-level institutions, whose students are overwhelmingly full-time.