Athlone's Institute of Technology is hopeful that it will submit its formal application to the Higher Education Authority for technological university (TU) status in the coming weeks.
The project to progress to university status in association with Limerick IT, received a 5 million euro allocation this week.
It will be used to for deepening interactions between the two colleges, particularly around research attainment, academic endeavours and system-wide integration.
Dr Niall Seery, Project Director of the AIT LIT Consortium, outlines the next steps.