It was then certainly getting off the ground in a big way, as Deputy Thornley and myself had reason to know when we faced in Maynooth, just after 6th July, something which could not properly be described as a howling mob of academics but a group of academics who were very incensed about the 6th July proposals. For the Minister to have appeared to make it a pre-condition of membership of this body that those concerned should accept a merger or the merger was certainly unwise and tactless and, I think, unnecessary. It did cause some difficulty at first within the body and for some time afterwards outside it. However, the apparent threat to the autonomy of the body involved in selecting people for their acceptance of a particular viewpoint on one matter was to a large degree resolved when the body at its first meeting asserted itself and one might almost say extorted from the Minister a statement of the matter and made its own statement of its autonomy and of the fact that it was not to be bound in its decisions by decisions taken in that way. This authority was still somewhat prejudiced by the pre-selection of the members but it did endeavour to restore its authority in the academic community by asserting its independence. That was a useful thing to do and it did help to make the body more acceptable despite the bad start it had.
It must be said that while at that time there were academics who were perhaps inclined to the view that a body so selected was so prejudicial to their views and interests that they would not accept it at all, that view lost ground very rapidly, and the actions of the authority and the way it has done its business since then has gradually restored confidence in it.
The authority sat down to do its work very quickly, by the standards of government, and well within a year produced its proposals to the Government for its establishment in permanent form. It decided not to advise the incorporation of proposals for a statutory Conference of Irish Universities in the legislation which would give statutory form to itself. It has been suggested authoritatively that it was because the authority felt that this conference should not be set up until the reconstruction of the university system was completed. That was an irrational view based on an optimistic assessment of the pace of reconstruction. I am not sure it was a viewpoint that one could stand over now. Indeed, I am not sure it was a viewpoint the authority would want to stand over. The whole process of the reconstruction of the university system has ground to a halt and nothing has happened either in regard to the proposed association of the two Dublin colleges into a single university or with regard to the internal reform of these colleges.
The question arises as to whether in fact the decision of the authority not to recommend simultaneous legislative action with regard to the Conference of Irish Universities and the Higher Education Authority itself, should be maintained. As it has taken the Government such a long time, over a year and a half, to do anything about this recommendation it is a pity that the authority did not use that time to reconsider its view on the Conference of Irish Universities. One can see why in the optimism of the time they thought it should be left until the university system was restructured but by now they must have realised it was a mistake. If that line is pursued we may not have a conference in existence for a few years to come. We must realise the existence of such a body is important. One cannot help wondering whether their reluctance to press the matter over 18 months ago, when they made that recommendation, or their failure to do anything since, reflects the feeling they would like to get themselves off the ground first before any body, which might appear to be a rival body, is started.
This Bill should have included provision for the Conference of Irish Universities. In the Government's original statement in July, 1968, there was no suggestion about not having them contemporaneously. Indeed, the two bodies are designed to be so complementary that a system involving one and not the other would become lop-sided and might not work as smoothly as it should. I regret the authority's decision in respect of the Conference of Irish Universities and I regret their failure to reconsider that decision over a period of 18 months during which time they have waited, no doubt, with impatience for Government action. I also regret that the Minister when introducing the Bill did not on his own initiative decide to do something about this and refer back to the authority and ask for their recommendations on the Conference of Irish Universities so that he might include provision for it in this Bill.
I regret and deplore the delay in bringing this legislation before the House. It is not easy to find any topic on which I have to address the House in respect of which I am not in a position to deplore the delay of the Government decision-making. No matter what area of Government one discusses the problem is the same. Things which in the private sector would be done in days or weeks take not just months but years when the Government and their servants get their hands on them.
The Government were presented 18 months ago with recommendations for this Bill. I have not seen these recommendations but clearly they were in considerable detail and if they were not a draft Bill they were heads for a draft Bill. Parliamentary draughtsmen could have knocked the Bill together on the basis of what they were given in a couple of days, and for all I know they did, but it has taken over 18 months to bring the Bill before the House.
I would remind the Minister that it is now almost four years since the late Deputy O'Malley made his announcement about the so-called merger involving the association of two Dublin colleges and one university. There is not even a glimmer of a hope of a decision on this matter. We are no further on. I do not place the full blame for that on the present Minister; other forces have been at work. The proposals were perhaps misconceived in their origins and some of the detailed work done subsequently was mistaken in various ways but a good deal of the blame rests obviously in other quarters—the slow tempo of decision-making. But from the point of view of the public, and I speak here as a public representative rather than as an academic, it is unsatisfactory that the matter has taken so long because everything is held up for the want of this. The fact that this Bill does not contain, as it should contain, proposals for a Conference of Irish Universities, does not reflect any great credit on the Government or indeed on people in the universities who have been slow to make up their minds and have had difficulty in reaching agreement amongst themselves.
While we are waiting for these decisions the universities are continuing in structures which are totally outdated. A serious breakdown was avoided less than two years ago in the largest college in this country because the structures of the college are so ill-designed that they do not reflect the wishes of either students or staff and for a period indeed the authority of those who control power in the college was so shaken that it lapsed for a period. It was only with a degree of luck and a degree of hard work that it was possible to master that situation and bring that institution away from the bring of what could have been a disastrous situation and put it on an even keel again.
Since then there has been no more trouble or effervescence in the college but that will not necessarily last. We have had a sense of post-revolutionary anti-climax for the past 50 years and things have been peaceful but it is no thanks to the Government and the Minister who have failed to introduce any reforms in existing institutions or to make concrete proposals and implement them in legislation for a restructuring of the system.
I accept the Minister has many difficulties to face with regard to the proposed merger and, as I say, the delays are by no means all his fault. The Minister should have faced the fact some time ago that it was going to take years to implement if year after year is to pass without anything being done. We cannot wait indefinitely for a reform of the institutional structure of these colleges, which is extraordinarily antiquated. In the NUI it is a system which grew out of an uneasy compromise between such dispirited forces as the Irish Parliamentary Party, which has been defunct for some years past, the Irish Hirearchy at that time and the British Liberal Party, which has also been virtually defunct for some decades.
The battle between these forces produced a particular structure enshrined in legislation, designed to be as rigid as an oyster in its shell, whose rigidity has failed completely to cope with the changes which have taken place during the last 60 years. An institution whose structures were fossilised in a mould designed, not to meet the needs even of 60 years ago, but to meet the counter-pressures of different groups, several of which have disappeared since, is a dangerous structure to maintain. Our universities are continuing to operate with difficulty and at any given moment they are on the brink of much greater difficulties, avoiding them only by luck and at times by the degree of skill exercised by those who have a responsible part to play whether they are staff or students.
We should not allow our university structure to drift on in this condition, unreformed and without any immediate hope or prospect of reform because a particular proposal made by a particular Minister four years ago has got bogged down. The association of the two Dublin colleges into a single university, if it is to happen, will require legislation but whether they are associated or not into a single university, the structures within those colleges will be much the same: the same problem of securing a democratic system responding on the one hand to the public interest, which these institutions must respond to, and on the other hand to the wishes and needs of those deeply involved in them, staff and students. That need is there and the solutions to it will be the same whether these colleges are associated into a single university or not.
The issue of the association of these colleges into a single university and the issue of the rationalisation of faculties, while of great importance and great interest, are not vital to the structures of the colleges. In fact they have little to do with the structure of Trinity College, University College Cork or University College, Galway who have been left to continue in their antiquated structures, pending the resolution of a problem which is totally irrelevant to them.
I would impress on the Minister the need for urgency in this regard because one cannot judge at what moment the persistence of outdated structures, which are not democratic in character, may lead to an explosion or an outburst. The fact that we got through one such outburst without fatal results should not lead the Minister to breathe a sigh of relief and think he can let things rest at that.
It was pure accident, in many respects, that we succeeded in getting through on that occasion. The same thing might not happen again. It is a matter of serious neglect to allow year after year to pass and take no action to deal with this problem. The blame for the neglect is not solely the Minister's. I am not aware that he has secured from academic bodies or even, indeed, from student bodies adequately worked out proposals for structural reform to encourage him to move in this matter. There is a responsibility on the Government to initiate action and not always to wait for other people to press for it. The need here is great and urgent.
This Bill is isolated in many ways from the realities of the university system and it fails to do anything about the need for an academic co-ordinating system through conferences of Irish universities. It fails to reform the structures of the colleges and it fails to tell us any more or to do anything about the proposed merger arrangement. While it is welcome in itself for the little it does—it is subject to many individual criticisms—I would hope that the Minister will see that it is inadequate and that he will see to it that other legislation dealing with these problems will come before us soon.
I should like to say a few words about some aspects of this Bill. Before doing so I must refer in general terms to the question of university autonomy. This is a subject which is rarely discussed satisfactorily. Usually it is either discussed within a university where the prevailing opinion is that autonomy means that the university should be allowed to run its own affairs and send the bill to the taxpayer, or else it is discussed outside the university amongst people who, frustrated by what appears to them at times to be the failure of the university to respond to community needs, regard the claiming of autonomy with either suspicion or lack of comprehension.
You can have two sets of discussions, one inside the university and one outside, both failing to appreciate each other's viewpoint and with no great meeting of minds. The truth is that this issue of autonomy is one which can only be settled in a sense by not settling it. If you attempt to lay down everything in clear, legal, precise form, to divide responsibilities off one from the other between the Government and the universities and institutions of higher education, you are liable to get into difficulties. It is only by not pursuing matters to their logical conclusion that the system can work in this area. It must be recognised by the universities that if they wish to have the say in how they run their own internal affairs, they must act responsibly. They must respond to legitimate community pressures. They must recognise the force of these pressures and they must want to meet them, within the limits imposed by their financial resources and the limits imposed by their duty above all to maintain their standards.
On the part of those outside the universities concerned to ensure that the university does, in fact, achieve the goals which the community want it to achieve, there must be a recognition that any attempt to achieve this by directing the university to run particular courses, or to lower its standards in a particular area, any such direct intervention involving a legal power to direct, would undermine the autonomy of the university and, although it might achieve the immediate objective of securing the particular aim of community policy, it could be prejudical to the long-term interests of the country.
In any given situation when there are two bodies each of which has its particular interest and rights, and when there is no system of arbitrating between them, tension will exist. It can be constructive tension but it could be destructive. If at any stage the Government were minded to take powers to intervene in certain matters which directly affect the life of the university, that could have disastrous consequences. Equally if the universities are minded to resist community pressures in a way which creates amongst public representatives a sense of legitimate frustration, the failure of the universities to respond to community needs could endanger their own autonomy.
There is no clear-cut answer to this. It must be said for this Bill that, by establishing a buffer between the Government and the universities, something useful is being done, on the one hand to secure more adequately than hitherto the achievement of community aims and, on the other hand, to ensure the autonomy of the universities. I will have criticisms to make on particular aspects of the Bill as failing to meet these requirements perfectly or adequately. The existence of such a body would be helpful. We cannot have any body that would arbitrate between the Government and the universities because, particularly when it comes to the allocation of funds, the Government must ultimately have supreme authority, but the existence of a buffer body which could put the needs of the universities more cogently and in a more co-ordinated and comprehensible way to the Government, and which could iron out duplication where it might exist, and ensure that any demands for money are backed up by logical arguments, and are not the consequences of in-fighting between the institutions, will clearly be helpful in persuading the Government to provide the money.
The existence of a body which will distribute that money between the institutions concerned, and which will get the Government out of the act, and ensure that the Government are not in a position of allocating funds directly to institutions and involving themselves to that extent rather directly in their affairs is a useful thing too. So, the setting up of this body proposed in this Bill is something which everyone must welcome. It is the best contribution we can make, subject to some changes which I shall propose in due course, to —I will not say to the solution—meeting the problem of maintaining university autonomy while ensuring that the Government have control over public expenditure, because about that we must be concerned in this House also.
That is as far as one can push this issue of autonomy. It is important to stress that there is no solution that is absolutely satisfactory and to resist any claim on either side to more than they are entitled to: to resist claims by the universities that they have the right to spend money and have it given to them without its having to be duly authorised by Parliament—not that they have claimed that but such thinking might arise at some stage—and to resist any claims by the Government to interfere with the internal life of the universities. I think that is as far as one can push this question of autonomy.
With regard to the Bill itself, there are a number of features I want to comment on. Naturally a number of the points I will be making are, in their detailed implementation, more a matter for Committee Stage. It may be helpful to air some of the major points so that the Minister can consider them in the meantime. First of all the Bill makes no provision for student representation on this body. I do not want to press this particular issue excessively. I do not suggest for a moment that in matters of long-term financial planning, which is what is involved here, the role of the students is likely to be nearly so important or vital as it is in the internal life of the university where everything that is done affects them directly: the lay out of courses and all the arrangements for running the university. They all affect them. They are the consumers.
I feel and I have always felt that they must have an adequate voice and a very significant voice in the internal affairs of the university. I do not suggest that the voice they should have on a body such as this should be comparable because I do not think that student representatives have as immediate an interest here or are likely to make as full a contribution here. At the same time, their complete omission is a mistake I think. I would say in this respect—and the Minister may agree with me—that the contribution that has been made by the Union of Students in Ireland to the evolution of policy in the past couple of years should command respect and I think it entitles them to consideration for representation on a body of this kind.
I have found that the USI in the research work they have been doing, and the data they have been producing, have been doing an extraordinarily useful job. It is rather paradoxical that because there are so many more students, and therefore they have the finance, they have a full-time staff who are able to do this kind of work and do it extremely well, whereas the university teachers being smaller in number have not got a full-time staff for this purpose. While they have made a remarkable contribution in the papers they have submitted to the Irish Federation of University Teachers on many matters when it comes to research and quantification the USI are actually better equipped and they have made a very real contribution. I have found that when I am stuck for information of a factual character often if I turn to them they have the information. I have been impressed by the quality of the work they have done. We are fortunate to have this body doing this work.
Of course there can be many criticisims of any student body. The congresses of the USI or the elections to SRCs are not always, even to politicians, entirely edifying but that should not take away at all from the solid work done by this body and the useful contribution it is making. There is a strong case for some student representation here not as the USI have proposed—one third/one third/one third representation to students, academics and others. I think for this body that is inappropriate. Indeed I have said that to some student representatives. However, a couple of student representatives could, judging by the quality of the work they have been producing, make a useful contribution and they do have an interest in the work of this body although a less direct and vital one than they have in universities and institutions of higher education themselves. I would, therefore, suggest to the Minister that he should consider making provision for some student representation and I will in fact bring in an amendment to that effect in due course.
The question of the definition of "academic post" in section I has given rise to a good deal of comment from several bodies. There is concern that academic representatives should be genuine academics, that they should be full time academics and not simply people who perhaps give a few lectures and classify therefore as having academic positions but whose interests are mainly outside the university. That seems to be a fair point. There is also a suggestion that it would be important, if they are to represent the academic viewpoint, that they should be not only at the time of their appointment but for the duration of their period of service members on an academic staff, that for example the appointment to this body of a 69 years old professor who will then remain on the body until he is 92 might not necessarily make as good a contribution as somebody who, throughout the period of his membership, continues to be an academic. I think there is a point there though one is loth to tie things down too tightly because of course there will be cases where the man who will make the biggest contribution will be a man who has retired but retains a vital interest in academic affairs. This is something we should look at. There is concern among the academics and this has been expressed by the Irish Federation of University Teachers to ensure that academic representation is genuine, live, academic participation in this body. That is a fair point.
I have already referred to the question of what bodies should be included. I think the Minister should consider including at this stage a number of bodies such as the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland which is clearly a body that ought to come within the framework of this Bill. I am not quite sure why it was omitted. I would hope that other bodies would be added to that but anyway the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland is already in the same position as the universities and it certainly should be in at this stage whatever one can say about the other bodies.
I am not entirely happy about giving to the Minister alone, though after consultation with the authority, the power to designate other institutions of higher education for the purposes of the Act. This is one of the things the authority should have the power to do. It should have the power to initiate proposals for extending its functions to other bodies although the final decision should rest with the Minister. I do not suggest that the authority should be able to add to its responsibilities off its own bat but I do suggest that it would be more satisfactory if it had the power of initiative and the Minister the power of decision in such a way that there would be an assurance that bodies which are elevated to the position of being under the auspices of this authority are ones which this authority itself feels are eligible for, and appropriate to such treatment. A small amendment could perhaps achieve that result, which seems to me worth securing.
The appointment of a chairman and members involves a rather unusual procedure when taken together. The Minister appoints a chairman and then having consulted the chairman he has appointed he appoints the members. I am not aware off-hand of that procedure being adopted elsewhere. I am open to correction on that. I think there is a strong case for any body choosing its own chairman. For a body to be chosen by the chairman, in part, is a singular reversal of known procedure. I wonder if the Minister would indicate why he is adopting this curious procedure. It may be that it, in some way, relates back to the way the ad hoc authority was chosen. It is quite possible that the then Minister did consult Doctor Rafferty who became chairman of it before he selected the members but it is one thing to launch the ad hoc body in that way—there may have been particular reasons for that at the time, Doctor Rafferty was at that time Secretary of the Department of Education if I recall correctly because it was his transfer to this post of chairman which was the occasion of his departure from the secretaryship—the fact that that was done then, if it was done then, does not make it good normal procedure.
I feel the same procedure should be followed here as is followed in other similar cases, that the chairman should be chosen by the body itself. I can see that the Minister will say that in State-sponsored bodies the Minister often chooses all the members including the chairman but it is a bit different here because he is, in fact, introducing a new element of which I am not aware in State bodies, of the chairman himself having been chosen and helping to choose the other members. It is a little different from establishing a State body and appointing a board and nominating a chairman just like that. It seems to relegate the chairman into a very particular position and all the members are beholden to him, in part, for having been nominated. That would suggest a kind of relationship which is not the happiest one for this body. I would ask the Minister to reconsider that arrangement or at least to start by explaining it to us and if the explanation seems to us and to him unconvincing then to reconsider it. There are other questions to do with the chairman and indeed the members, as to how long they should hold office. These are matters for Committee Stage.
On the powers of the body the question arises as to whether more safeguards are needed to preserve those elements of the autonomy of these institutions which should properly be preserved if not to them individually at least to them working within a conference of Irish universities. The powers given to the authority are in some respects undefined and open-ended. One of the disadvantages of establishing this authority now in a Bill which does not include provision for a conference of Irish universities is that this body starts off with rather open-ended powers and the conference when established has to carve out a niche for itself in an area where the authority could claim to have a competence. A combination of a two stage operation establishing the authority first and the conference second and giving the authority rather open-ended powers is a somewhat unhappy one and suggests at the least that perhaps some safeguards for academic autonomy—by that I do not necessarily mean autonomy in one institution but either the autonomy of the individual institution or of the institutions taken together in the conference of Irish universities—should be preserved in matters such as admission standards, staff/student ratios and so on.
Section 12 is the controversial one. The Minister has indicated that he has had second thoughts on this, I think following representations to him by the Higher Education Authority. I am not entirely clear—it is rather difficult to take this in at short notice—what exactly the Minister is proposing. I would like him to explain more fully what he means by the Book of Estimates containing, by way of information, details in relation to the various institutions concerned to show how the bulk sums were arrived at. If I understand this correctly, it is just as prejudicial as section 12, as it stands, because, if the Book of Estimates is to contain a statement as to how the sums were arrived at, this immediately prejudices the authority in the distribution of the total sum it receives. We have to make up our minds to it that, when this body is established, there will be a grant, or a grant-in-aid—I hesitate to say which in view of current events—to it and the size of that will be determined by the Government in their own discretion, having heard the representations of the authority, and, if the Government give the full grant, one would expect the authority in all logic to distribute it in accordance with the proposals it has itself submitted. If the Government do not give the full grant and, so far, Governments have not given anything near the full grant required by universities—they have fallen far below minimum requirements in all respects—then it is a matter for the authority to decide where the cuts will have to be made.
What does the Minister mean when he says the Book of Estimates will contain, by way of information, details in relation to the various institutions concerned to show how the bulk sums were arrived at? I wonder does the Minister appreciate the significance of what he says because, if that means what it says, it implies that the sum granted will be in all cases the sum sought. A Book of Estimates containing sums more than the sum voted would be curious and that would be the consequence of what the Minister said. If the sum granted is somewhat less than the sum sought that would be a different matter. Does the Minister propose that the full sum will be given in each case or does he propose to insert in the Book of Estimates sums beyond what are voted? Has the Minister thought out the logic of what he has just said? Because of relatively recent representations made to him he may not have fully thought out the implications and, perhaps, the suggestion that this should be done is designed in some way to keep some kind of departmental control over the allocation of the amounts. If that is so, then I am against it in its own right; it is an awkward and unworkable system for the reasons I have just given. The Minister should forget that and arrange that the authority is given a sum which the Government decide should be allocated for university education and, if that sum is the full grant sought, the authority will distribute it accordingly. The authority will have to decide whether the case will be made. I cannot understand the logic of retaining control. I do not think this is relevant, proper or workable, for the reasons I have just mentioned.
While I welcome the Minister's statement that he proposes to amend section 12, I will await the form of his amendment—I may put down one of my own to spur him on—and I would hope that he would explain more fully what his intentions are when he comes to reply to the debate and give us a further indication of precisely what he proposes to do with section 12. This is very important because this is a most sensitive area. It is one in respect of which universities and university teachers have reacted most strongly and the Higher Education Authority has been in touch with the Minister about it. The Minister is aware of the importance of doing the right thing here. The whole value of the Higher Education Authority would be undermined if its role as distributor of the grants secured by its representations were diminished in any way by Government intervention. If we are going to have a Higher Education Authority between the Government and its institutions, then let us have it, and be done with it, but no half measures of this kind. I hope the Minister's amendment will clear the matter up once and for all and resolve this problem.
When one considers the internal autonomy of the colleges and their power to use the money the Higher Education Authority allocates to them, one should be very clear about what we want. On the one hand, we do not want colleges putting in for money to build a library, getting it, and building a canteen instead. If I were the Government I should be slow to permit that kind of thing to happen. These capital grants must be expended on the purposes for which the Higher Education Authority allocates them and the authority should impose conditions on the spending of these capital grants. The situation is different in the case of current expenses. Each college will make its submission with regard to its needs. It will have to discuss these and justify its figures, perhaps more fully than it is required to do at present, with, one hopes, more constructive and generous results. The authority having decided the sum to be given, it would be quite wrong if, in the spending of that money, there was a tight control over every item.
The kind of case the universities and the Higher Education Authority will make will be that its staff/student ratio is inadequate and it will need more staff; salaries will have to be increased; more equipment will be needed in certain areas. When it comes to spending the money, as in any institution, the exact pattern of expenditure will never be indentical with what is proposed. It may say it needs 40 more academic staff and its maintenance costs will go up by a certain amount. When it comes to the point it may not be able to get 40 extra academic staff and, at the same time, it may be short of money to cut the grass, or something. In all reason, when it comes to current expenditure, the institutions must be allowed flexibility within the total sum. At the moment they are forced to justify all expenditure and they must submit their accounts at the end of the year. Any deviation from the general pattern will be known to the Higher Education Authority and it would be wrong, as the Bill suggests, to tie down the precise pattern of expenditure to the exact pattern set out in the university's budget. It is quite proper with regard to capital expenditure but undesirable with regard to current expenditure. Some amendment is needed to cover that point.
On the question of the aims and objectives of the Higher Education Authority, the Bill formulates these in sections 3 and 4 in a way which is not entirely satisfactory. First of all, in section 3 it selects as general functions of the authority, in addition to the specific functions it may have, furthering the development of higher education, assisting in the co-ordination of State investment in higher education and preparing proposals for such investment, and promoting an appreciation of the value of higher education and research. I wonder how these were selected. I could think of a different list equally valid.
In section 4 we have the statutory adjuration to bear in mind constantly the national aims of restoring the Irish language and preserving and developing the national culture. This has been included in similar phraseology in other Acts, such as the Broadcasting Authority Act. These two sections set out a framework. They specify the criteria by which the work of the authority is to be guided. I am not sure they are adequate as a statement of what the authority should be about. If we want to give guidance to the authority as to the things it should aim at doing, we should be a little more concrete. "Furthering the development of higher education" and "promoting an appreciation of its value" are very vague phrases. Are they worth putting in? Are they not things any authority would be doing automatically? Could you imagine an authority doing anything which did not involve these things?
There is something to be said for being a little more specific and setting out the criteria by which the authority should judge the proposals put before it in order to determine its decisions and these criteria would, I suggest, include, on the one hand, what is loosely called the democratisation of education —that is, endeavouring to ensure to the maximum degree possible equality of opportunity. This is a legitimate aim and it is no harm to write it in. There is also, however, the less popular and, for that very reason, perhaps more important, maintenance of standards. This should be written in. It was one of the great merits of the Commission on Higher Education, whose report did have many defects, including the length of time it took to prepare it, that it laid stress on this, unfashionable stress but, for that very reason, necessary stress, on the maintenance of standards. Indeed, the chairman of that commission, in talking to university teachers, which he had occasion to do once or twice, laid great stress on the need to stand firm on the maintenance of standards and not to be sidetracked in response to even legitimate popular pressures. The pressures are there, legitimate and proper pressures, but it is important that, in allowing these pressures to have effect, we do not prejudice standards and there is a danger they will be prejudiced.
I should like to see among the aims of the Authority that aim to which the commission attached such importance enshrined there as a guideline to them so that if, at some time it is under pressure to follow a particular course of action which could be prejudicial to standards, it has something to fall back on and it could say: "We must bear in mind the maintenance of standards and your proposal is one which would be prejudicial to this." The Minister might give a little thought to the wording of these aims. They are at present so general as to be meaningless and useless and should either be omitted or replaced by something of practical value to the Authority in its work.
My only other detailed comment on the Bill itself is that at several points the approval of the Minister is inserted as a requirement in a manner which I think is quite unnecessary and seems to betoken the Civil Service origins of the Bill. The Authority must be seen to be an independent Authority. If it wants to recruit staff it must be free to do so; it must be free to dismiss, staff. It is quite wrong that the approval of the Minister should be involved in these matters. There has been far too much of this tendency to exert quite bureaucratic control over bodies that should be independent. I know of one research body in respect of which, at a meeting at which I was present some years ago when some question arose of a member of the staff going to a research conference abroad, we were solemnly told that this could not be done because the Minister and the Department concerned said there was a shortage of money and in his Department nobody was going to leave the country for a certain period. This was considered to be mandatory on this allegedly independent body. The matter was fought and settled but the fact that this kind of claim could be made, that this attempt to impose departmental policy could arise in an independent body, shows the need to eliminate this kind of attempt to the the hands of those concerned.
It is very important that this body should be independent if it is to have the confidence of the academic community—which it must have—as well as the confidence of the Government and the public. It is important that it should be seen to be independent and that it should have power to select its own staff and that the staff should not be civil servants on secondment. I do not mean that none of them should be because we are fortunate at the moment in that we have Dr. Rafferty who is not, of course, on secondment but came directly from the public service and to whose work on this body I have already paid tribute. I do not know the staff of the body intimately but I know of one member of the staff who was seconded from the public service and who is doing an excellent job there. I do not wish to rule out such people but it is very important that the corpus of staff should as a whole not be drawn from the Civil Service concerning which the Minister must accept that the academic community have suspicions just as deep as public servants have about academics. That mutual suspicion would best be met by having this body staffed as independently as possible. Anything that appears to tie the hands of the Authority in this matter and which involves seeking the Minister's approval could happily be deleted, without any loss. If the Minister thinks about it I believe he will agree that it is better to omit it and retain or secure confidence in this body than to have this sort of provision which appears to tie their hands in a manner that can do no real good but could do harm.
There are one or two other points of a more general character that I wish to make before I conclude. I should like the Minister to say what he proposes about this body and its method of reporting. We had one general report from this body so far. I took it that this was its first annual report but although it has produced, I think, two other reports since then on particular topics, it has not produced a second general report. A body of this kind should have the same obligation to produce an annual report as any other of its type, any other State-sponsored body carrying out functions in the public interest. I do not know if it is worth writing it into the Bill. I am reluctant to write in things that might tie the hands of the Authority but the rather surprising fact that it has not produced a second annual report a year after the first makes one wonder whether it is necessary to require this. I should have thought that a suggestion from the Minister that he would like to see a report might be sufficient without necessarily putting it into the legislation. Perhaps the Minister would indicate his views on this subject? While, of course, we value the special reports of the Authority on particular topics—we may agree or disagree with them but they are valuable—we are entitled to have a report each year on progress so that we know how it is getting on because it has a great deal of work to do and we would like to keep an eye on how it does it.
Some concern has been aroused not only in academic circles but in wider circles about the autonomy of this body and its functions because of the rather curious and, as far as I know, unresolved conflict between the Authority and the Department on the question of the capital needs of higher education in the years ahead. We had a statement in, I think, the general report of the Authority on what these capital needs would be. We had a statement by the Minister—I cannot recall whether it was from the present Minister or his predecessor; I think it was the present Minister—that the sum required to achieve the same objective would be enormously less. Subject to correction, I think the figures were £25 million and £15 million. I think there is confusion here to which the Minister may have inadvertently contributed. I do not think the same job can be done for the different sums of money. In fact, I think more is involved here than less expensive building standards and that the two bodies, the Minister and his Department on one hand and the Authority on the other, are talking of different things.
The Minister must appreciate that if the Authority produces a figure of this kind it is a considered assessment and it is the Authority's job to produce this assessment. If this is shot down by the Minister and his Department as too high by two-thirds for a given amount of building space this can only raise doubts on one hand, about the competence of the Authority and on the other, about the competence of the Department. Both cannot be right, if in fact the two figures relate to the same thing. There is a deep suspicion—probably justified—in academic circles that they do not and that the Minister in naming this figure of £15 million was not simply saying: "We know how to build cheaper than you do" but "We do not think you should build so much" or "You should be building different things". Either way, this unfortunate conflict has arisen and it is one that has raised serious doubts about whether this Authority is allowed to do its job because it is its job to decide what buildings are required and what the cost will be. It is the Government's job to decide if it will give the money. I am not suggesting the Government should fork out £25 million if the Authority says so. If the Government so decide that it cannot afford the money or that some of the money is for purposes which it does not regard as sufficiently urgent, that is the job of the Government to do. It is quite different if the Government say: "We think your figure is wrong; you have made a mistake in calculating it; you have over-estimated building costs." I do not think that is the function of the Government. Of course, when the time comes to build, the Government could legitimately offer the benefit of its building expertise to the Authority if it thought it was needed and advise the Authority on any way in which it could build more cheaply. That could be done privately and comfortably behind the scene and if, as a result, we get the same amount of buildings for less than £25 million everybody will be very happy, the institutions concerned, the HEA and the public.
This controversy has been unfortunate and has raised doubts. It should be clear that this is a matter for the Authority and I think the Minister should clarify the matter. I know he has had some discussions with, I think, among others, the Irish Federation of University Teachers. I am not aware of the outcome of these discussions, at least in any detail. I still have no clear or satisfactory picture as to how this divergence arose. It would be helpful if the Minister explained it to us and would help to clear up what is, perhaps, no more than a misunderstanding.
The figure of £25 million seemed to me at the time not inappropriate. It represented about twice the annual building rate then current which was £2 million a year. I should have thought that if the Authority was right in its assessment of future student needs—and this is a matter of opinion —if the student needs were there, it would require approximately double the very inadequate rate of building we have seen until recently. I accept that these are matters of opinion and that my opinion is worth no more than that of anybody else and less, perhaps, than the Minister's or the Authority's as I am in less direct contact with it.
There is another report of the Authority to which I should like to make reference because I have not had occasion to do so hitherto and I think this is a legitimate opportunity to do so. I refer to the Teacher Training Report. I found this report most unsatisfactory, unsatisfactory because I disagreed not only with its conclusions, which is a very good reason, but also with its logic, which is a more profound reason.
The Minister may recall, because I think he has a special interest in this subject, that this report quoted from an international source with a view to validating the decision it took as to the way teacher training should be carried out. He should read carefully that rather long footnote in which is set out the view of the international body representing a number of countries, including ourselves, as to how teacher training should be carried out. As far as I can see the recommendation of the authority was really in direct conflict with this international viewpoint which it was quoting in support of what it was doing. I am not just saying that without having given it thought or without having consulted people directly concerned. I have endeavoured to discover if there was any method of reconciling the two and I have argued with the people concerned and the argument has convinced me that I am right and the two are not reconcilable. I think our teacher training is in danger of taking a wrong turning because the authority have not taken an imaginative enough position on it.
The viewpoint of Fine Gael, set out in our policy document four years ago, is that very serious consideration should be given as to whether in the Irish circumstances teacher training should not be carried out by first of all arranging for the aspiring teachers to get a university degree in a university college and then completing—and this is what happens with secondary teachers—the teacher training subsequently. I am aware of arguments which would appear to contradict this but I think one can reconcile them. I am aware that the idea of one year actual training in teaching techniques may seem inadequate but—and this is something to which we gave a lot of thought and we had consultations with many people on this matter, some of them directly concerned in teacher training—what we had in mind was that people who wanted to do teaching would do an ordinary BA, not a B.Ed, which is what is implied by this unfortunate recommendation, which would then be treated as a second class qualification, but that through an arrangement with the university they would be able to do a certain amount of concurrent training in theory and practice of education during the period of the BA, if they were doing a general BA.
If they were doing an Honours BA then the position would be different and the advantage of getting the specialised knowledge of the subject and the ability to teach it at a high level would compensate because such teachers would then be teaching at a level where the actual method of teaching is a little less important and that would compensate for the lack of this continuous pedagogic training during the period. Having completed the university training you would then have general degree students who would have had contemporaneous training in theory and practice in education, and honours students who would not have it, and the two together would then go on for a year devoted to the whole question of the techniques of teaching.
In fact, at the moment there is a two-year course in the training college. As far as I am aware the time over the two years is broadly divided between academic subjects and teacher training in the narrower sense. The total amount of time that would be available for training in theory and practice of teaching in education would under my proposal be no less and in the case of general students who would have done a certain amount of work contemporaneous with the degree course would be rather more. It would mean that our teachers would have the advantage of a university education in all cases. I do not believe you are going to get ultimate complete acceptance of the concept of the single teaching profession if you are going to turn out one lot of teachers in teacher training colleges, elevated to give B.Ed's, and other teachers going to universities and then going on to do a subsequent course. I am well aware that the subsequent course as done in the university has traditionally not been very satisfactory and in some cases is still not satisfactory. I am not defending the H.Dip. in Ed. for one moment, as at present practised in some of these institutions, but you are not going to resolve the basic problem of the unity of the teaching profession with which the Minister is deeply concerned, in the long run if you have these two different systems.
The Minister must know, and his predecessor should have known, that you cannot just elevate the existing teacher training colleges into colleges giving degrees overnight, and expect that their degrees will be recognised immediately as university degrees. There is a big difference between these institutions and universities. Even in St. Patrick's College which is one of the best equipped training colleges, both in terms of its premises and of its staff, and which has the advantage of having this research unit working there, I do not think they would claim that overnight it could become, without a transitional period, a university college whose degrees would be accepted everywhere. The idea that all these colleges could be so converted overnight and that they then give a B.Ed., because only teachers would be going there, and that this would be accepted as having parity with university degrees, is not the case.
The Minister may like to think that it would be but it will not. It seems much more to the point that, as we are at the stage where in any event our university education is relatively cheap, particularly in the case of the general degree, where the actual cost is much less than the teacher training course at present, which is largely residential, we could in fact at very little cost, if not at some saving, give a university education to all our teachers and ensure that they do not start their full training period until they have had that. The system of bringing in people straight from school and putting them through a training college, even if you elevate it and call it something else, and call the qualification at the end a B.Ed., is not satisfactory. All teachers have a right to a full university education in a university institution in which there are other students not going on to be teachers. They must not be segregated into separate institutions. That has gone on too long and the proposal which the Minister and his predecessor have being pursuing, and a proposal which is endorsed by the Higher Education Authority, wrongly I think, would continue this. I appeal to the Minister not to accept in this case the authority report automatically. He should consider very carefully the implications. I would hope that one or more of the existing teacher training colleges could quite quickly become university colleges with a transitional period. I am not suggesting that the existing institutions must remain and simply do the year's course afterwards. On the contrary. In the case of St. Patrick's, in particular, things could be organised so that working in conjunction with an existing university college for a few years it could very quickly reach the point where it could become a full university college and would have coming to it all kinds of people who are not going to become teachers at all. Some of the other institutions would continue their training college functions doing a one year's course and at the same time I would hope the H.Dip in Ed. course in the universities for secondary teachers would be improved drastically and would be made much more full time. That would require financial assistance for the students so that they would not have to teach during that year. That would be one of the Minister's main priorities.
I hope the Minister will have an open mind on the question of teacher training and not just accept his predecessor's policy or the HEA recommendations without further thought but that he will examine the internal logic of that document which seems to me to be seriously defective.
One other point which I wish to air for the benefit of the Minister is that I am not convinced that the present method of financing undergraduate education in universities by block grants to the university, enabling the university to cut the fees by an average of three-quarters, is the right system. It is socially objectionable and it does not help the autonomy of the universities. As things are, if a school student gets two or three honours and does not qualify for a Government grant his ability to go to university is determined by his parents' ability to pay the fee and to keep him during his time at the university. If they can pay the fee of £85 or £120 or whatever it may be, then the Minister in his generosity will give him three times as much again, because by giving block grants the universities are enabled to reduce their fees by three-quarters, and in some cases by over three-quarters. What happens is that the man who can afford to pay £100 perhaps, for a particular course, gets access to the £300 of Government aid for students, which is the average aid for students at the university at present— but only if he has £100. The student whose parents cannot afford the entrance fee does not get the benefit of the Government's £300. This is a reverse of the whole basic principle of our social welfare code. Here we have a system of to whomsoever hath, it shall be given because if the student has the £100 the Government will help him.
I should prefer a system whereby the full fee for university education was charged and reimbursed by student grants. It would be preferable that the universities should not receive direct grants but that the student should receive the grant and he should be able to spend the full £400 at the university of his choice. The universities should not have to look to the Government for finance and the students should be financed regardless of their parents' means.
That is the last point I wish to make as we have reached the time for adjournment of Public Business and another speaker may wish to contribute on the resumption of Public Business.
